John Logie Baird: Why So Many Plaques?
TV pioneer has four plaques within a five-minute Soho/Covent Garden walk.
Welcome to your Friday newsletter.
Before we move on to the main feature about John Logie Baird and his many plaques, here’s the History Radar1of upcoming London history events.
History Radar
HAMPTON COURT: A reminder that Hampton Court Palace’s gardens are open for free this weekend (27-28 April) — a rare chance to poke around the historic lawns without paying the sizeable entrance fee.
MUSEUM DEPOT: Also this weekend, London Transport Museum’s Acton Depot is open to the public. It’s one of my favourite collections in town, with vintage trams, trains, buses, signage, posters and much more — and on larger premises than the main Covent Garden venue.
MARX LIBRARY: Get a tour of this quirky building in Clerkenwell in which Lenin worked in exile in the early 20th century. It also contains one of the most unusual mosaics in London, featuring giant communists smashing up London. That’s on Wed 1 May.
TIME MACHINE DRINKS: Also on 1 May, join me and other Londonist: Time Machine subscribers for some casual drinks and an historical chinwag in a traditional pub in the Wapping area. Please email me on matt@londonist.com if you’d like to come and I’ll provide more details. Note, this is for paying subscribers only.
LONDON HISTORY PUB QUIZ: I’m also serving as quizmaster (and question setter) for the London Historians sixth annual pub quiz on 15 May. 50 questions, all about London history, with lots of prizes and the mildly coveted trophy (upon which the winners get their names engraved). Do come along and see if you can beat the set of tour guides who win it every year!
ROMAN LONDON: Good news, the Billingsgate Roman Bath House is open again, for prebooked Saturday tours, now until November. It’s a slightly bizarre experience, viewing the remains of a Roman spa within the basement of a hulking concrete office building, but certainly worth a look.
John Logie Baird: Why so Many Plaques?
Walk around Soho and Covent Garden and one name pops up time and time again. John Logie Baird, Scottish-born inventor of television, seems to have broadcast his achievements to half the streets in the area.
Here’s the most famous example. Baird’s official Blue Plaque can be found on 22 Frith Street, Soho — on the wall of Bar Italia.
The claim made here is that television was first demonstrated in the building in 1926. A brass plaque with further details below confirms this. But round the corner, another plaque suggests something very similar. This one’s attached to a building on the corner of St Martin’s Lane and West Street.
This one notes the first experimental television transmissions 1926-1928. (Incidentally, it’s positioned on the offices of Equity, the actors’ union, which carries a second plaque to Sir Alec Guinness.)
Practically next door on the wall of the Long Acre bar is a third plaque, this time leaping forward a few years:
This one’s been put up by a pub chain, to celebrate the location of Logie Baird’s first broadcast (as opposed to a small-scale experiment) in 1929. But cross the road and walk around the corner and you’ll find our fourth plaque making a very similar assertion:
This plaque also commemorates the first broadcast, and gives a more precise date of 30 September 1929. What’s going on here?
