Here's a new one... enamel signs in-situ. Past & Present. This one was high up on the wall of a tobacconist shop.

...Over to you folks

Spotted today on old railway station in Dinas N.Wales

Yoy must have eyes like a hawk!

Sheffield, 1979ish

 

 

 

Barnard Castle (I think) 1982ish. Spiller's was the best, and one I managed to get too, after some tooing and froing, and a small exchange of cash, but long gone now (sadly!) It was fixed to the door with flat-headed nails, that didn't want to come out!

 

 

 Two somewhere in North Yorkshire, in the 1980s! (Not sure where though!)

Fantastic pics SS..Never seen an Ogdens St.Julien brick background "without" packets before..looks like the one above has been painted over??..if only back then in the 70z we had todays tecno with cameras and shit like today..Would of been pics of signs all over the place that early collectors would of spotted and taken down..instead if you were lucky enuff to have a camera back then and take pics it would take ages for Boots or likewise to produce them

Mel,,the sign i took pic of was shit anyway to be honest..File is too big to add pics..??Sorry

I've got quite a lot of interesting in situ photos of signs that I took in the 80s but it doesn't seem possible to upload them. It's frustrating.

hinkslamps - if you want to send me a few to me, I'll try to put them up here for you, if you like. E: britishenamels@gmail.com (Don't inundate me though!)

Hi BB, Sadly the one that had been painted over wasn't an enamel underneath, so far as I could tell! As you know, even by the early 1980s, few signs were still in-situ, so to go through one town with all these was unheard-of! Luckily, I had a sympathetic driver with me, who responded to "stop,stop! There are more signs there!" And they're in the order we came across them too; first the tobacconist with the Ogden's strips either side of the door and the brick-pattern one at high level, then the Guinness on a pub, and finally the Spiller's on the other side of town on an old granary at first floor level, in the shade of a large projecting canopy!

factory boy - I don't know if you remember, but on the railway line just outside Nottingham, on the line towards Sheffield, you used to be able to see a shop with large blue and white cocoa or chocolate signs at or above fascia level? I think they were probably Fry's? The railway line was separated from the street that ran parallel by a high brick wall, and you could just see the shop fascia over the top!

Thanks very much sign-seeker. I'll email you in the next couple of days.

Sign Seeker - Interesting that you remember those signs. I think the old shop in question was on Farraday Rd in Lenton, on the corner of Cycle Road. You would see this street raised up from the line shortly before it branched off at Radford towards Trowell. This was where the Raleigh Factory was. The area, and possibly the shop was filmed in Sillitoe's Saturday Night & Sunday Morning c1961. Some nice signs were found inside that shop including two mint Will's Star packets which were fixed to the counter front. The blue plain lettering signs on the wall outside were left in situ for years and not considered worthy of removing! We left loads of them including the ones at Annie Godward's on Peveril Street seen on page 22 of Street Jewellery which Andrew M photographed back in the 70s. In the early 80s a group of students mopped up what was left and took it all to a house facing the old Player's factory. I bought most of it from them and sold it on to Whitbread & Andy Thornton to decorate the dreaded 'Theme Pubs'!!! Happy days. Interestingly I am involved in a writing project in this area at present and just taken a load of photographs. There was a great old sweet factory down there as well... Another story!
FB