So, what exactly is a plaque…or to be more precise, what is the acceptance criteria for openplaques? The obvious ones are blue, round and issued by English Heritage in London, but once you start looking you quickly find that there are many plaques not managed by EH. In fact, we now have 341 different issuing organisations listed. Plaque inscriptions often follow a pattern and almost have their own syntax which is how we can automatically parse many of them. The majority are in the format “[person name] [born]-[died] [roles] [verb]” for example plaque #1 reads, ”George Seferis 1900-1971 Greek Ambassador, poet and Nobel laureate lived here 1957-1962″. I’d count this as a class 1 plaque.
Photographer: Gwynhafyr. Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial License. Some plaques commemorate events or places… plaque #1091 reads, ”Near this spot the General Letter Office stood in Post House Yard 1653-1666 Here were struck in 1661 the first postmarks in the world”. This gives us two connections: the General Letter Office stood here; and the first postmarks in the world were struck here.
Photographer: Gwynhafyr. Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial License. The general rule is that the plaque commemorates someone/something that happened at or near the location of the plaque. We don’t include burial place markers, grave stones, memorials or foundation stones. However, we try to accomodate interesting special cases. A favourite of mine is the victim of The 1831 Brighton Trunk Murder “Beneath this path are deposited portions of the remains of Celia Holloway who was brutally murdered in the Lovers Walk of this parish in the year of Christ 1831 aged 32 years.”
Photographer: J’Roo. Licence: Attribution-ShareAlike License. Then you’ve just got the weird and wonderful to fit in somehow: “First bomb of World War One to fall from a zeppelin on London dropped in the garden of The Nevill Arms Public House 30 May 1915 “Mario Lanza Ghostwriter haunts here” “At this fearful place, Sherlock Holmes vanquished Professor Moriarty, on 4 May 1891″…that’s at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland “From 1878 to 1893 as Newton Heath (LYR) C & FC and later Newton Heath FC. Manchester United played here on the North Road Ground.”
