The Writing On The Wall

Last week the city council's Culture & Tourism Sub-Committee approved a proposal to set up a Commemorative Plaque Panel. A what?

It's a little bit of the heritage business in which significant historical figures who have some sort of connection with the city, usually because they lived here (at least for a time) are remembered by the installation of a plaque on the home where they once lived. I say 'business' because it would appear the panel wouldn't have seen the light of day unless a justification on commercial and tourist-attraction grounds had been made. Which is a shame. Commemorative plaques are in their own small way a part of history making, a way in which a community remembers its past. That is a civic responsibility not a commercial matter, though I have no objection to encouraging visitors to explore the heritage of the city via its commemorative plaques.

Commemorative plaques are nothing new, of course. At the national level English Heritage is rolling out a programme of plaque installation throughout the country, and in the past both the former councils of Brighton and of Hove had their own commemorative schemes. But the schemes fell into disuse, probably the victim of budget cuts in the bad old days of recession and government cutbacks.

According to the report to the Sub-Committee there are 103 existing plaques installed around the city, many in a poor condition - see the photo. It was also reported that there are 20 or so nominations for additional plaques on the table.

So the reason for the panel is to adjudicate on who should be honoured with a plaque from year to year. The annual budget proposed for the scheme is around £1000 - not a lot. Especially so, when you consider what might be the cost of restoring existing plaques.

By the way, the Green Party proposed that there should be a number of pink plaques installed to remember significant members of the gay community from the city's past. The history of the city's gay community is, of course, an integral part of the history of the city, but the pink-plaque idea strikes me as a piece of headline-grabbing, vote touting which does the party no credit.

Note: The photograph shows the plaque to Gideon Mantell, one of the founding fathers of geology and palaeontology, who lived in Brighton between 1833 and 1838 at 20 Old Steine. Not a lot of years you might say but it was during these years that Mantell really rose to fame as the discover of dinosaurs and one of the primary promoters of the view that there was an Age of Reptiles that long preceded the Age of Mammals (and of humanity). No 20 was both his home and his museum, displaying the most important of his collection of 25,000 fossil specimens.