Which local person, group, event, open space, structure or building do you think should be commemorated permanently this year?
We are opening up nominations for blue plaques again and we want to hear our readers’ thoughts over the next six weeks, before the annual deadline arrives at the end of June.We want to encourage people to put forward as wide-ranging a group of nominees as possible.
Southwark Heritage Association (SHA), which runs the programme in conjuction with Southwark News has put up more than 50 blue plaques commemorating people with local connections, and Southwark institutions that are particularly worth knowing about, since 2002.
Dulwich codebreaker Helene Aldwinckle is this year’s Southwark blue plaque winner
Getting Southwark Council on board with the scheme it was and is a way of getting round the strict criteria put in place by English Heritage – which runs the national programme – that a building must be standing and a person dead to qualify.
Last year Dulwich resident and World War Two codebreaker Helene Aldwinckle emerged victorious in a crowded field, and her blue plaque should be unveiled by the end of June. The other nominees last year were Barbara Steveni, Peckham resident and ‘the most famous artist you’ve never heard of’; the Reverend Jimmy Butterworth, Walworth Methodist preacher and trailblazing social worker; Borough-based spy novelist Len Deighton and Francis Peek, nineteenth-century businessman, and the driving force behind the opening up of Dulwich Park.
Southwark Blue Plaques: Francis Peek, businessman and campaigner who helped open Dulwich Park
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After we select this year’s nominees, voting will open until mid-September, at which point we will announce the winner. Some of the previous winners are below.
Bermondsey Abbey
Bermondsey Abbey traces its origins to 1082 when a wealthy Londoner called Aylwin Childe set up a monastery on the site. French monks from the Loire came over – this was less than twenty years after the Norman conquest – and the community began. The monks were from the Cluny abbey, and the Bermondsey monastery only became independent about 300 years later.
The community was given the manor of Bermondsey by William II in 1094, and flourished. Describing the abbey, a nineteenth century historian wrote: “The monastic buildings were, doubtless, very extensive and magnificent; and the monks maintained a splendid hospitality and state.”
Sadly, like all monastic institutions, the abbey was dissolved under Henry VIII in the sixteenth century and much of the site was soon demolished to make way for a new mansion. Little of the abbey remains, although there are some remnants of the south-western tower visible under the Lokma restaurant at the corner of Tower Bridge Road and Abbey Street.
Edgar Kail
Dulwich Hamlet forward Edgar Kail was the last non-league footballer to play for England. Kail made his debut at the age of just 15 in 1915, and scored more than 400 goals for the Hamlet during his time with the club.
When the Camberwell man was called up to the England squad in 1929, he became the last non-league player to ever represent the Three Lions.
Despite the attention of professional clubs, Kail remained with Hamlet’s amateurs throughout his entire playing career.
Although he last pulled on the famous blue and pink strip in 1933, Kail’s name is still sung by Dulwich fans, and the club’s East Dulwich stadium is on Edgar Kail Way.
Una Marson
Una Marson was the BBC’s first black female programme maker. Una, who was born in 1905, moved to London from Jamaica in 1932, settling in Peckham. She moved back to Jamaica after four years before returning to London in 1938. She left again after the Second World War.
She became friends with Dr Harold Moody, the founder of the League of Coloured Peoples, and wrote extensively in poetry, fiction and non-fiction.
In 1942 she was hired by the BBC to work on Calling the West Indies, which encouraged Caribbean soldiers in the British army to send in messages to their families, which were read out on the radio. She was promoted to the role of producer in 1942.
Little concrete information is known about the final two decades of her life, from 1945-1965, although one biographer claims she suffered a breakdown and spent two periods in psychiatric hospitals.
Barbara Steveni: should ‘the most important artist nobody’s heard of’ get a Southwark blue plaque?
Druid Street
Bermondsey was bombed heavily in the Second World War because of its strategically important, railways docks and factories. The area is thought to have suffered 395 air raids in the last three months of 1940 alone, with tragic consequences. One such bombing was the direct hit on the Druid Street arch on October 25, 1940. Some 77 people died that night.
Time and Talents
Time and Talents is a social charity with 135 years of history in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe.
The charity was founded in 1887 to encourage educated women to help people less fortunate than them. After a few years of moving around, the group eventually found a permanent home in Bermondsey Street, where you can still see the stone frieze proclaiming its name.
The charity taught local women useful skills like singing, basketwork, knitting and sewing, and in 1913 set up housing for girls working on the docks who lived in crowded conditions at home. Time and Talents opened up a second centre on Abbey Street in 1931.
During the war, volunteers at Time and Talents helped rehouse people who had been bombed out of their homes. In 1980 the charity moved out of its Bermondsey buildings into the Old Mortuary on St Marychurch Street in Rotherhithe, where its community centre remains to this day.
If you would like to nominate someone or something for a Southwark blue plaque, please email [email protected] visit southwarkheritage.org/blueplaques
