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23 June 2015

Clean up of Hanley Road HOVIS ghostsign

Another ghost sign demise.

An old faded hand-painted HOVIS advertisement sits above The Old Dairy public house at the end of Hanley Road in Stroud Green.

June 2008, December 2014 and June 2015
The picture on the left shows that there had been two versions of this sign painted one over the other; note how some words and phrases look to be repeated. However, this is just a fading over time such that the older sign starts to visibly seep through the newer one.
The decipherable elements were:
    J T TURNER
    BAKER & CONFECTIONER
    SHOPS & SCHOOLS SUPPLIED
    HOVIS
    BREAD
     (overprinted with)
    SUPPLIED TO HM THE KING


At the end of last year I noticed with sadness that some idiots had graffitied a wobbly indecipherable tag (defily?) over the bottom half. On closer inspection I realised that the sign had for some unknown reason been previously scrubbed clean. 
Well, here is an update: it's now free of graffiti but has been scrubbed even cleaner to remove the spray paint and, as you can see, we have now lost the word HOVIS altogether and the bottom section is a pale greeny-grey splurgy mess.


The brand name HOVIS came from the winning entry in an 1890 competion to name the then new bread. Herbert Grime won £25 by shortening the Latin "HOMINUS VIS" which means “the strength of man”.

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Thanks, Jane