This is a list of the blue plaques placed by English Heritage and its predecessors in the boroughs of London, the City of Westminster, and the City of London that are known to have been lost, replaced, or otherwise removed from the official London-wide commemorative plaque scheme. In some cases plaques have been recovered and preserved and, in a few cases, re-erected with or without the blessing of those administrating the scheme.

The scheme began in 1866. It was initially administered by the Society of Arts which referred to the plaques erected under its auspices as 'Memorial Tablets' (sometimes 'Memorial Tablets of Great Men And Events' or 'Memorial Tablets of Eminent Men'). This arrangement continued until December 1901 when, by agreement and with the encouragement of the Clerk to the Council Laurence Gomme, the scheme was taken over the London County Council which christened it 'Indication of Houses of Historical Interest in London'. The LCC ran the scheme until the County of London was abolished in 1965 when its successor body the Greater London Council (GLC) took charge and expanded the scheme into the newly created outer boroughs. With the abolition of the GLC in 1986, administration of the official London-wide blue plaque scheme passed to English Heritage.

During the first 150 years of the scheme's operation, it was estimated that just over 100 houses bearing plaques had been demolished including 12 destroyed in the 1939-1945 war. The rules for the scheme, established by the Society of Arts in the early years of its operation, adopted and expanded on by the LCC in 1903 and formalised in 1954, require that plaques may generally only be affixed to a surviving building with a close association to the person commemorated. A practice whereby plaques would sometimes be re-erected at rebuilt properties with an explanatory supplementary tablet ceased in 1938. The post-1954 'authenticity rule' was relaxed on occasion by the LCC and GLC, but in the English Heritage era this has not been the case. If, after the loss of a commemorated building and retrieval of the plaque an appropriate alternative London address cannot be identified, the plaque cannot be reaffixed to the new building or remain part of the scheme. Houses bearing plaques to Captain Oates, Edward Lear and Hugh Dowding have been retrieved and placed in storage in recent years, there being no surviving alternative London address for any of these, whereas it has been possible for English Heritage to authentically re-site the plaque to Lilian Lindsay after the house to which it had originally been affixed was knocked down, an alternative residence having been identified.

Indication of houses of historical interest in London

During the period 1867–1902, the Society of Arts recorded the basic details of the 'memorial tablets' erected under its auspices in the periodical The Journal of the Society of Arts. After taking over the scheme, the London County Council issued a series of booklets detailing the work it was undertaking, each entitled 'Indication of Houses of Historical Interest in London' with a Roman numeral to indicate the order of publication. Each of these recorded the particulars of three or four recently erected plaques and included a short biography of each individual commemorated, details of the connection between person and property, and a simple line drawing of each plaque. Approximately 80 of these were published between 1903 and 1936. The booklets were also compiled and published as six hard bound volumes, issued in 1907, 1909, 1912, 1923, 1930 and 1938 (an expanded second edition of first volume was published in 1915). These were followed by a 'New Series' of 4-page leaflets covering one plaque each; these were entitled 'London Houses of Historical Interest marked by memorial tablets'. covering plaques erected between 1937 and 1940, incorporating photographs or illustrations of the subjects and houses instead of the plaque drawings. Curiously, whilst later sources make reference to eight of these, there are ten in the LCC material held by The London Archives, Nos.1 and 7 being used twice.

The material published by the LCC before 1948 seldom made reference to the plaques erected by its predecessor, the Society of Arts. The first five bound volumes included appendices in which plaques erected by 'persons or authorities other than the London County Council' were listed, these containing brief details of the SOA plaques extant at the time of their publication. The lists in volumes II and II were continuations of the first, the lists in IV and V being as complete as possible at the time of publication. Only the plaque to Sarah Siddons, erected by the Society in 1876 was given its own illustrated 'chapter', this being due to it having been rehung along with a new supplementary tablet provided by the LCC in 1905; a drawing of these appears in the eighth booklet published, subsequently reproduced in the first of the bound volumes.

Publication of new 'Indication of houses of historical interest in London' leaflets ceased after the 1939–1945 war; simplified plaque lists entitled 'List of Houses of Historical Interest in London Marked by Memorial Tablets', now incorporating the surviving SOA plaques under the heading 'Tablets erected by the Royal Society of Arts and other bodies and now maintained by the council' were published by the LCC in April 1947 and March 1949, with losses due to enemy action and other factors indicated. Two more booklets listing the plaques in the scheme, 'Commemorative Tablets on Houses of Historical Interest' were published by the Council, the first in 1952 and a revised version in 1960. The Greater London Council published their 'Blue Plaques on Houses of Historical Interest in London' in 1971, and released an expanded version, featuring a pull-out map indicating the locations of the 365 plaques then in existence, in 1976.

Official publications from the English Heritage era include the coffee-table sized Lived In London: blue plaques and the stories behind them by Emily Cole, published in association with English Heritage in 2009, and The English Heritage Guide to Blue Plaques by the scheme's senior historian, Howard Spencer, first published in 2016, a revised and updated second edition appearing in 2019.

To date, no definitive list of plaques lost to the official London scheme has been published. Identifying them is a matter of reconciling historic sources to the list of plaques maintained by English Heritage. In many cases, the fate of the building to which a lost plaque was affixed can be determined via the pages of the Survey of London.

Plaques lost This section records plaques removed from the official London Blue Plaque Scheme after the demolition of the building to which they were affixed.

Plaques replaced This section records plaques which have been replaced due to damage, manufacturing error or biographical error with a new plaque at the same location.

Plaques preserved This section records plaques that, though removed from the official London Blue Plaque Scheme, still exist. The 'location' column indicates the original location of the plaque, not its current site. It is not uncommon for recovered plaques to be donated to museums or the plaques original sponsors. A number of plaques that have been rescued, in some cases for possible future reuse, are kept by English Heritage in archives at Wrest Park, Bedfordshire. The archive is not open to the public and the full contents of the collection are not currently available, however some of these 'orphaned' plaques were examined in two short films made by English Heritage about 'lost' plaques, released in April 2024.

Plaques relocated This section records plaques which were recovered after the loss of the building to which they were originally affixed and rehung by the custodians of the scheme at another, authentic former London residence. These plaques are not 'lost' and remain within the official London plaque scheme – it is the houses to which they were originally affixed that are lost. This section also covers the sole instance of a plaque being relocated to rectify a mistake.

Non-scheme plaques This section records plaques which have never formed part of the official London-wide plaque scheme but, bearing the name of one of the custodians of the scheme, are included for the sake of completeness.

Footnotes

References

London Archives References