Glasgow tenement where Stan Lauren grew up recognised with plaque
Stan Laurel - one half of classic comedy duo Laurel and Hardy - is to be commemorated with a plaque on the Glasgow tenement where he grew up.
Stan Laurel - one half of classic comedy duo Laurel and Hardy - is to be commemorated with a plaque on the Glasgow tenement where he grew up.
The comedian is one of 12 recipients of Historic Environment Scotland's plaque scheme, which allows members of the public to nominate notable figures for public commemoration.
His plaque will be mounted on the wall of the tenement block at 17 Craigmillar Road, where he spent part of his formative years.
Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Cumbria and was brought to Glasgow when he was a boy.
He made his stage debut at the age of 16 in the city's Britannia Panopticon, the world's oldest, still-used music hall.
His father, also Arthur Jefferson, was a theatre manager and the family had moved to Glasgow when he was offered a job at the city's Metropole Theatre.
Other famous names to be commemorated are authors Susan Ferrier and Dorothy Emily Stevenson; makar Allan Ramsay; journalist Neil Munro; women's rights campaigner Sarah Siddons Mair; railway engineer Sir Nigel Gresley, nationalist trailblazer Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham; biographer James Boswell; physicist Max Born; medical pioneer Dr Flora Murray and architect John James Burnet.
Martin Fairley, head of grants at Historic Environment Scotland, said: "The idea of the scheme is to allow the public to tell us which historic figures deserve to be celebrated and commemorated.
"By installing a plaque on a building closely associated with that person we hope to emphasise the social and human element of local architecture. After all, a building can have a great influence on the character of the person who lived or worked there.
"This latest batch of nominations provides some fine examples of that, as well as some prominent figures, from Stan Laurel, to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born, famous biographer James Boswell, and medical pioneer Dr Flora Murray, to name just a few.''