We were lucky at SCRP to be put in touch with Danny Coope, who helped us put together the information for 200 Blue plaques. He also designed and produced many of the materials. Danny played a huge role in making Rail Fair 200 a success.
Danny thinks of himself as an accidental historian. Back in 2011 he was working as a picture editor on a magazine, commissioning photo shoots by day but researching his family tree by night. He casually used the address search to discover who had lived in his house before him. It wasn’t long before this fascination extended to his neighbours, and then the whole street and a spreadsheet was born of who’d lived in each house, and their occupation, recorded in each census dating back in some cases to 1851.
Jobs included tea taster, water works foreman, mangler, whip socket maker, sanitary inspector, marine artist, goldsmith and railway ticket printer!
Danny really wanted to share what he was finding out and hit upon the blue plaque idea for an up-coming local Art Trail, part installation/part history lesson. Anti-celebrity blue plaques if you like, remembering the ordinary, the forgotten.
He designed them himself and had them printed on card, and cut them out by hand, and went up and down the street meeting neighbours he’d never met before, and convinced many to sellotape the plaques in their front windows for the three weeks of the town-wide arts event. Over 60 were displayed and it quickly became a highlight of the trail. Many of the houses were so proud of their history they kept the plaques up for months, even years.
It spawned a community commission for blue plaques remembering former shopkeepers on a High Street in Edmonton, and then some self-imposed collections on a theme such as TV & Film and Food & Drink. (where he got to celebrate a poultry trusser, soldified soup maker, offal clerk and fancy pickle filler)
But he’s had a steady trickle of private commissions ever since for individual houses around the country. He’s particularly fond of ostrich feather curler, saggar maker’s bottom knocker and Xylonite factory boy.
In 2025 SCRP commissioned Danny to create 200 blue plaques on a railway theme. With nominations from Line managers and local history groups, he’s compiled another collection of wildly different occupations and individuals with a railway connection such as navvy, signalman and luggage labeller to railway station architect, suffragette, wild west performer, botanical artist and even a fox terrier! He also helped create 100 current roles in the railway to demonstrate the opportunities available in todays railway industry.
SWR and GTR provided most of the development grants for this project, but all the TOCS and Network Rail helped us with suggestions and advice. It was a great team effort and the result was very gratifying indeed. Watch out for more news on how we will use this project to connect more people with their railway.
Photo: Danny Coope image from Silvertip Films
