English Heritage, the UK-based charity that awards the blue plaque and manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places in the country, has said that the Hampstead home that Satyajit Ray resided at in 1950 is in contention for the iconic tag. Ray, the maverick Indian filmmaker, who hailed from the city of Kolkata in West Bengal, had lived in London with his wife Bijoya while working at British advertising firm D J Keymer.
The house at 50 Willoughby Road in Hampstead is currently owned by Merilyn Fricker. The decision to award the property the prestigious tag will take around one and a half years, reports said.
The Pather Panchali director, who single-handedly put Indian movies on the world map with his aforementioned debut film, had lived in the central London property during his on-site assignment. Anvaya Ganguly, a UK-based IT professional and Ray’s ardent admirer, tracked down the house in 2023, as per reports.
Ganguly submitted an application to the charity for the recognition along with a letter that carries the London address. “I hope the letter will be a strong evidence to establish Ray’s association with the house,” Ganguly said, as quoted by The Times of India.
Evidence of Ray’s stay at the property has been furnished by his son, filmmaker Sandip Ray, and daughter-in-law Lalita, who provided the letter. “It will be great if the house does get the blue plaque,” Sandip said, as quoted by The Times of India.
The Honorary Academy Award winner Ray had also mentioned the London house in his memoir ‘My Years with Apu’. He wrote: “We Reached Portsmouth on a weekday, from where we took the train to Hampstead. Norman Clare, who was a great friend of ours, had arranged for us to stay with his mother as a guest. We occupied the third floor of a three-storied house on Willoughby Road where you had only to take a few steps to find yourself in good health.”
It was during his stay at the place that Ray decided to become a film maker, quitting his job as an ad agency’s art director, after watching Vittorio De Sica’s ‘Bicycle Thieves’.
Ray isn’t the only celebrity resident in Hampstead. The neighbourhood has housed the rich and famous through the ages. Some of the area’s residents include Agatha Christie, T S Eliot, Sigmund Freud, George Orwell and Elizabeth Taylor. All the properties belonging to these famous personalities now sport blue plaques.
