Alan Turing Blue Plaque (Warrington Crescent)

The blue plaque at 2 Warrington Crescent in Maida Vale marks the corner apartment building — then the Colonnade Hotel — where Alan Turing (1912-1954) was born on 23 June 1912. Turing's work at Bletchley Park during the Second World War cracked the Enigma code and shortened the war in Europe by an estimated two years; his 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers" is the founding document of computer science. In 1952 Turing was convicted of gross indecency under the same section of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 that had sent Oscar Wilde to prison in 1895. He accepted chemical castration in lieu of imprisonment; two years later he was found dead beside a half-eaten apple laced with cyanide, aged 41. His conviction was pardoned posthumously in 2013; the "Alan Turing Law" of 2017 extended that pardon to all men convicted under the same statute. English Heritage installed the blue plaque in 1998, part of the London-wide programme marking the birthplaces of significant historical figures. The building itself is a five-storey Victorian mansion block, now private residential apartments; the plaque is at first-floor level on the western façade, visible from the pavement. Warrington Crescent is a residential street; Warwick Avenue tube (Bakerloo line) is three minutes' walk. Free, 24/7 sidewalk view. Combine with the Vale of Health area of Hampstead, where Turing later worked, or with the Freddie Mercury blue plaque nearby.