Faringdon set to honour visitors Freddie Mercury and Slade

The answer - all three have spent time in Faringdon.

In fact, they are now set to be honoured with pink plaques installed at different buildings around the market town.

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Queen frontman Mercury is set to be recognised with a plaque outside the Bull Public House, a former pub now in residential use.

The singer is believed to have possibly been in a relationship with someone who used to run the pub on London Street.

The plaque, which still has to be approved because of the building’s grade II listed status, would read: “Freddie Mercury, Rock Star, Partied at this pub in the late 1980s.”

Queen frontman Freddie Mercury would be recognised with a pink plaque (Image: Liza Whitney)

In front of the Corn Exchange, another grade II listed building, a plaque would mark where English rock band Slade reportedly played a gig in the late 1960s before they made it big.

The proposed plaque describes the band as having “played a very loud concert here in the late 1960s.”

English rock band Slade would be recognised outside the Corn Exchange where they reportedly played a gig in the late 1960's (Image: Dave Hill)

Elsewhere in the town, plaques could potentially recognise the Cistercian monks who occupied a priory, the site of the Regent Cinema, and Angel Heavens, mentioned in the novel Tom Brown's Schooldays.

The idea first came to Rachel Williams while she was sitting in a pub more than three years ago.

She said: “I was sat in the pub just before the pandemic and I thought it would be fun if we had some slightly quirky equivalents to the blue plaques you get in London.

“Not just the boring stuff but something exciting and unusual.

“I’m not a councillor but I have lived in Faringdon for six years and I like its quirkiness. For example, there is a sign on the side of a house that says, ‘this sign is not in use’.

“Another sign says, ‘Please don’t throw stones at this sign’ and another one says ‘please don’t feed the giraffes.”

Her friend and town councillor Rosalind Burns helped propose the idea to the town council, as well as submit the applications for the plaques intended on listed buildings.

The Bull Public House, now residential, was visited by Freddie Mercury when it was a pub (Image: Rosalind Burns)

They decided the plaques should be pink in honour of Lord Berners, former occupant of Faringdon House, who famously dyed his doves in a multicoloured fashion.

Ms Williams said: “It will allow the people of Faringdon to know a little bit more about the history of the town.

“It’s not a massively busy town but we do get visitors and they will see the plaques and think ‘what’s that about?’

“It lets them know its not just a Cotswold market town and that it is had got some history.”