22/09/26 - On the Trail of...... William Blake

Poet, Artist, Prophet

One thing leads to another - The The make an astonishing comeback album Ensoulment. Talk about enhancing, rather than destroying a legacy. Track 2 is "Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave Of William Blake".

Which leads me to want to know more about who William Blake is. 

This book will almost certainly be my book of the year 2026. Increasingly complex ideas and theories introduced to a man who left behind an incredible body of work. The art looks more suited to 1970s prog rock covers. The poems eminently quotable.

In London for a couple of days, I asked AI to highlight locations that had William Blake connections. 

I made use of the Oyster Card Cap.

Birth

A blue plaque - and high rise - in Broadwick Street, Soho.

Soho Birth

William Blake House

Living

A couple of locations - down in Hercules Road, Lambeth (to which we will return) and another William Blake house. Also in South Moulton Street in more salubrious Mayfair.

South of the Water

North of the Water

Baptism

St Jame's, Picadilly, on 11/12/1757

A religious man

Works

Under the arches in Lambeth, in Virgil Street and Centuar Street is a collection of mosaic representations of most of his famous artworks. Sketchy and difficult to photograph, due to the lighting. An unusual art gallery. 

The lad himself

And his representation of Isaac Newton

Death

Time for a coffee at Bunhill Fields cemetary.

It began as a Nonconformist burial ground in the 1660s, just outside the City boundary. Being independent of the established church made it particularly attractive to Dissenters, and over the next couple of centuries around 123,000 people were buried here. Among them were John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Isaac Watts and of course, the man himself.

There are, slightly confusingly, two Blake graves to find. The older memorial, erected in 1927, marks the spot where people believed William and Catherine Blake were buried. The actual grave was identified about 20 metres away in 2006, after painstaking research of the cemetery records. It was unmarked, as Blake's burial had never been given a headstone. A new memorial was eventually installed on the correct site in 2018. Two graves, one poet, and only one of them is actually his.

In the dappled light

Meeting place for the Blake Society

I give you the end of a golden string;

Only wind it into a ball,

It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate

Built in Jerusalem’s wall.”