By Sam Wilson Ford
[email protected]
People who installed counterfeit blue plaques have been accused of ‘whitewashing’ history and ‘gentrifying’ the surrounding area by local campaigners.
Two fictional star actresses, Katherine Ford and ‘Raven Bjorn’ – as in Cat-ford and the Ravensbourne River which runs through the borough – have been installed in the area, in recognition of Catford’s real film studio which operated between 1914-1922.
The architect who spearheaded the project, Tara Tsuruta, footed the bill and installed the plaques in Catford Broadway without consulting the community-run shop below – House of Catford – which only found out about the fictitious characters via Robert Elms’ BBC Radio London show.
But Cheryl McLeod of Catford Against Social Cleansing was not happy.
She said: “This is part of an elaborate marketing exercise to gentrify Catford and erase our social history.
“Lewisham, and Catford in particular, have a rich and colourful history – something I believe should be celebrated, not mocked.
Fake plaques
“It is a crude attempt to whitewash our heritage out of existence.”
Real blue plaques are issued by English Heritage and are deliberated over the course of several months by a panel of historians researching each proposed person’s eminence and genuine association with a property.
By contrast, Mr Tsuruta’s plaques claim to be issued by the ‘Heritage of Catwanda’ – a term borrowing its name from a 2018 kids’ craft event that put a feline twist on ‘Wakanda’ – the capital city in the Marvel blockbuster Black Panther.
Accompanying the plaques is a detailed back story for each of the actresses, whose purported breakout film was Varney the Vampyre – a silent film in which Bjorn played the ‘wicked sidekick of the film’s leading man’, while Ford starred as the ‘plucky heroine’.
Aside from highlighting Catford’s forgotten film studios, Mr Tsuruta also draws on the area’s genuine pedigree for producing Hollywood stars in the form of Lewisham-born Elsa Lanchester – the star of 1935 hit The Bride of Frankenstein.
Born in 1902, Ms Lanchester went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on two separate occasions.
The plaques form part of Mr Tsuruta’s property development in which he incorporates 27,620 cats throughout the building’s internal and external decoration.
The last one-bedroom flat in the complex was marketed at £1,100pcm.
A spokeswoman for Tsuruta Architects said: “The blue plaques at 17/18 Catford Broadway are designed to draw more attention to the area’s local history by connecting a memory of Catford to the new development of the town centre.
“The two fictitious characters who were commemorated by the two plaques allegedly lived in the house about 100 years ago when Catford had one of the two most important film studios in the UK.
“This follows a tradition set by other fabricated plaques, such as the famous example in Bankside from the 1940s where a resident claimed Christopher Wren had lived in his house, creating a tourist destination in its own right.
“Our installation also explores the boundary of authenticity and more information can be found at https://www.thequeenofcatford.org/catz-factz/blog-post-title-one-5j6ts.”
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https://londonnewsonline.co.uk/fake-plaques-whitewashing-our-history-say-opponents/
