The Blue Plaques of Greenwich Borough

Having completed my Blue Plaques of Lewisham Borough run I decided to try another Borough. This time neighbouring Greenwich. This has 16 plaques that stretch from Blackheath in the west to Eltham in the east.

I began by making my way north through Lewisham and across Blackheath to Chesterfield Walk which runs alongside the western edge of Greenwich Park. Ranger's House has two inscriptions - neither on blue plaques but on the official page - one for Statesman and Author Philip Stanhope and the other for Field Marshal Garnet Wolseley. 

Garnet Wolseley was said to be so efficient that the phrase "everything's all Sir Garnet" was used widely in the late 19th Century to mean "all is in order".

Macartney House is just a little further on and has a plaque honouring General James Wolfe who was famous for defeating the French and capturing Quebec.

Further down the hill the road becomes Croom's Hill and another two blue plaques can be found. The first is for Benjamin Waugh who founded the NSPCC. The second remembers Cecil Day-Lewis who was Poet Laureate from 1968-1972 and Father of the Actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

I continued to the bottom of the hill and ran along the south side of Greenwich Park. I then had to go back up the hill on the other side of the park to find Vanbrugh Hill and the site of the plaque for Sir Frank Dyson. Dyson was an English astronomer and Astronomer Royal who introduced time signals ("pips") from Greenwich, England. He also played a role in proving Einstein's theory of general relativity.

I was now back on the heath and crossed it to find Pond Road where Nathaniel Hawthorne once stayed. He was a writer and he stayed there once. Funny how some people get a plaque so easily and many more famous and prominent people don't get anything...

I turned back on myself to find three plaques in one street. This is Bennett Park in Blackheath. Here is one for postcard cartoonist Donald McGill, another for the GPO film unit, and the third for Astrophysicist and Mathematician Sir Arthur Eddington.

Just around the corner in Morden Road, Charles Gounod is honoured. He was a French Composer who wrote 12 operas including 'Faust'.

Crossing Blackheath once again I made my way along Shooter's Hill towards Charlton stopping to visit the plaque for father and son William Lindley and Sir William Heerlein Lindley. They designed water sewerage systems for over 30 cities including Warsaw and Prague.

Once in Charlton I soon found the next two on my list. Engineer William Henry Barlow and Aron Hector Schmitz, better known as Italo Svevo. He was a close friend of James Joyce and a pioneering writer of psychological novels.

Just two more to go. It was a relatively long uninterrupted run now all the way to Eltham. My first stop was for Herbert Morrison who was a Labour Cabinet Minister one hundred years ago and lost out to Clement Attlee in the leadership contest of 1935. Some might say he dodged a bullet.

My final destination was Footscray Road where Naturalist and Writer Richard Jefferies lived. I recently read his book After London; or, Wild England so it was the one that connected most with me on this particular run.

In total I ran 14 miles.