Luke

Whilst out for a stroll in my local area this blue plaque caught my eye:

“Margaret Powell 1907 – 1984 Author and Broadcaster lived here.”

It is equidistant to the council dump and the allotments. Anyway my curiosity was piqued as I'd never heard of Margaret Powell and the blue isn't from an official body such as the council or English Heritage.

A quick search shows she wrote a popular book about her early career in domestic service called Below Stairs. That book was the inspiration for the old TV series “Upstairs, Downstairs” and also for “Beryl's Lot”. She wrote some more books and was later a popular guest on tv talkshows. All this would have been a bit before my time which would explain I'd never heard of her. So I found out who she was but still none the wiser as to how the blue plaque came to be.