THOUSANDS of people pass 23 Brook Street in Mayfair every day without ever looking up. If they did, they would notice a 19.5-inch (49.5 cm) circular blue plaque informing them that Jimi Hendrix, an American guitarist, called this place home in 1968-69. Awarded by English Heritage, a national agency part-funded by the government, the plaques are a permanent reminder of London's ever-changing cultural history. They offer "a more complete idea of the activities of different ages," observed Sir William Reid Dick, a sculptor, in 1953 (whose own work at Clifton Hall Studios in St John's Wood earned a plaque in 2001). "Buildings are, after all, more than just bricks and mortar: they are the theatres in which our lives are enacted."

Founded by the Royal Society of Arts in 1866, the scheme is reckoned to be the oldest of its kind in the world. But the plaques aren't cheap—each one costs nearly £1,000 ($1,600) to create—and English Heritage (which has run the scheme since 1986) has some budget cuts to reckon with. The agency intends to halt new commissions and cut the plaque team down to two full-time members, for a saving of £120,000 a year.

The news has been greeted with some predictable howls ("the city's very identity is at stake," writes Jonathan Jones at the Guardian). Yet to its detractors, the blue plaques are not only pricey but doled out in odd ways. Pedestrians in Holland Park may learn that Cetshwayo kaMpande, King of the Zulus, was once a local. Evidently Joseph Grimaldi, a clown, lived in Islington in the early 19th century. Some may question whether Fred Perry, Britain's pre-war tennis hero deserves the same sort of recognition as Sir Winston Churchill.

Those who feel strongly about anointing the former homes of the great and the forgotten may be heartened to know that other organisations have already stepped into the breach. Charles Babbage, a 19th-century mathematician (for whom our technology blog is named), may have been snubbed by English Heritage, but has still managed to earn not one but two commemorative plaques, from Westminster City Council and Southwark Council.