It was built by public subscription, but was very small as an auditorium and failed within 20 years. By 1858 the building had become a newpspaper reading room and lecture hall. It was damaged by a bomb blast in World War II, and the shell of the building was eventually bought by the Blackheath Preservation Trust, and rebuilt in 1975, retaining some of the original walls and shape.
Information from Blackheath Archive.
Credit for this entry to: Alan Patient of www.plaquesoflondon.co.uk
This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Blackheath Literary Institution
The Blackheath Literary Institution, 1845. Restored by the Blackheath Preserv...
This entry has kindly been written for us by Franklin Bishop, expert on Polidori, and editor of "John William Polidori ‘The Vampyre’ and other writings", 2005. Polidori wrote The Vampyre, a novell...
Novelist and playwright. Born Jerome Clapp Jerome at Bradford Street, Walsall, Staffordshire. He supposedly changed his middle name to Klapka in homage to General George Klapka, a hero of the Hunga...
Artist, writer and sheep breeder. Born Helen Beatrix Potter at 2 Bolton Gardens, South Kensington where she lived in the third floor nursery until she was in her thirties. She used her second name ...
Person, Animals, Art, Children, Literature, Seriously Famous
Novelist, poet and dramatist, best known in the UK for Les Misérables, 1862, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, 1831. As an outspoken republican he lived outside France for 15 years, first in Belgium...
Writer. Born at 66 Braxfield Road, Brockley. His best known work, 'Tarka the Otter' was published in 1927. He attended the Nuremberg rally in Berlin and saw Adolf Hitler as a source of good for his...
