#plaque366 Catch-Up! #GeorgeOrwell #DylanThomas & #LeslieStephen #VanessaBell #VirginiaWoolf

Whoops! Plaque catch up! Having missed a couple of days due to circumstances beyond my control, here's a quick catch up – five plaques in one post at two locations!
A London commemorative plaque for every day in 2016. 

The plaques are selected from all walks of life, and all points of the London compass – and I'm taking requests too!

DROP ME A LINE or leave a comment below if you'd like to nominate a plaque for inclusion in the series




I love the wording on this pair - "Drank here!"
Find these two thirsty writers on The Wheatsheaf pub in Rathbone Place…


22 Hyde Park Gate is the only house in London with three plaques…

Sir Leslie Stephen has one of those wide-ranging Victorian CV's that make the millennial jaw drop: mountaineer, critic, historian, biographer and author. His first marriage was to William Makepeace Thackeray's daughter Harriet. Following Harriet's premature death in 1875 – from eclampsia – he married the widowed Julia Duckworth (a philanthropist and biographer who had also modelled for Edward Burne-Jones) in 1878. Together they had four children - two of them are commemorated with blue plaques at 22 Hyde Park Gate.
First child Vanessa (born 1879) became a painter and designer, one of the most celebrated artists of The Bloomsbury Group, and her sister Virginia Woolf a major novelist, also one of the leading lights of the Bloomsbury group. 
(I'll return to both Vanessa Bell & Virginia Woolf in this series before the year is out.)
(An earlier Daily Constitutional post by David Tucker adds a fourth plaque to 22 Hyde Park Gate!)


A London Walk costs £10 – £8 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all London Walks can be found at www.walks.com