Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), poet & novelist, lived here 1878-1881.

The London County Council first erected a plaque to Thomas Hardy here in March 1940 - just before wartime economies prompted the council's seven year closure of the scheme. Of the experimental sepia brown series, by the 1960s it was worn to the point of illegibility and replaced with a standard blue roundel in 1962. The only other plaque erected in 1940, to Rudjard Kipling, was of the same type and was to suffer the same fate.