Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s birthplace

Composer of ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’, born here in 1875 to a Sierra Leonean father and English mother. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born at 15 Theobalds Road, Holborn, in 1875 and raised in Croydon. By his early twenties he had become one of the most performed composers in the English-speaking world: ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’ was the standard cantata in choral societies from Cardiff to Cleveland.

He died at 37, of pneumonia exacerbated by overwork — a victim of an English copyright system that paid him a flat fee for what became one of the most lucrative scores of the era. His funeral cortege drew thousands.

People

• Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Themes

• Music

Place

• Camden
• Victorian

Hero image

• File: /media/people/samuel-coleridge-taylor.jpg
• Credit: Unknown photographer, c.1893
• License: Public domain
• Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASamuel_Coleridge-Taylor_c.1893.JPG

Sources

• Self, Geoffrey. The Hiawatha Man: The Life and Work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Scolar Press, 1995.
• English Heritage Blue Plaques: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor — https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/samuel-coleridge-taylor/