Famous comedy actor Stan Laurel is to be commemorated with a plaque on the Glasgow tenement where he spent teenage years.

Laurel – whose real name was Arthur Stanley Jefferson – moved to the city with his family when he was a boy, and he made his stage debut at the age of 16 in the Britannia Panopticon on Trongate before becoming famous the world over as one half of comedy duo Laurel and Hardy.

His plaque – one of 12 announced by Historic Environment Scotland – will be mounted on the wall of 17 Craigmillar Road on the south side.

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Other recipients of the Plaque Scheme include pioneers in the fields of engineering, architecture, literature, science, politics and women’s rights.

Martin Fairley, Head of Grants at Historic Environment Scotland, said: “The idea of the scheme is to allow the public to tell us which historic figures deserve to be celebrated and commemorated.

“By installing a plaque on a building closely associated with that person we hope to emphasise the social and human element of local architecture. After all, a building can have a great influence on the character of the person who lived or worked there.”

Laurel’s father, Arthur Jefferson, was a theatre manager and the family moved from Cumbria to Glasgow when he was offered a job at the city’s Metropole Theatre (now demolished).

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The young Stan Laurel was fascinated by the theatre and made his first tentative steps into show business on the stage of the Britannia Music Hall, now known as the Britannia Panopticon, which remains a mecca for Laurel and Hardy fans to this day.

Although his career was to take him all over the world, Laurel always retained a strong affinity with Glasgow. Such was his popularity with Glaswegians that when Laurel and Hardy arrived on tour in the city, huge crowds gathered in the streets to see them.

This round of recipients also includes Glasgow journalist and author Neil Munro, famous for his comic creation Para Handy; and Glasgow architect John James Burnet, who designed many buildings in the city including the Athenaeum and Alhambra Theatres.

Sarah Siddons Mair, a campaigner for women’s education and suffrage; railway engineer Sir Nigel Gresley, and politician Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, who was a founder of the Scottish Labour Party, are also in the current batch, alongside poet Allan Ramsay, novelists Susan Ferrier and Dorothy Stevenson, biographer and diarist James Boswell and physicist Max Born.

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The Historic Environment Scotland Commemorative Plaque Scheme celebrates significant historic figures by awarding plaques to be erected on the buildings where they lived or worked.

Anybody can nominate a person to be recognised by completing an application form on the Historic Environment Scotland website www.historicenvironment.scot