Local discovery

Along with blue plaques, there are brown plaques and green plaques, commemorating people who made contributions to history and "famous places".  Here in the back streets of Upper Holloway, north London, at the end of a group of shops-used-as-housing on Marlborough Street, is the site of  Marie Stopes' first family planning clinic, opened in March 1921. In 1925 it moved to Whitfield Street in central London, where it remains.

The opening of the clinic created one of the greatest social impacts of the 20th century and marked the start of a new era in which couples, for the first time, could reliably take control over their fertility.

Upper Holloway is also Pooterland - the setting for "Diary of a Nobody" (1888). In the Pooters' day, these shops would have been a useful local amenity.