24 February 2017

Ghostsign – Hinton and Gunner, two Wembley pork and beef butchers

In a narrow alley on the side of Paddy Power, Ealing Road, Wembley Central Central station there is a lovely multi-layered painted sign, see here.  

It's impossible to get a straight-on shot of this sign so I have transformed it using Photoshop to make it more legible
As you can clearly see, there have been at least two butchers trading at this location – it's evident that one has been painted over the other. However they offered mainly the same thing:The earlier blue/green lettering is for R. Gunner whose name is shown in italicised script that runs diagonally up and across the whole panel. Also in the same colour, at top left: DAIRY FED PORK, and at bottom right: ENGLISH & SCOTCH MEAT ONLY – the information imparted succinctly and clearly
The subsequent black lettering for HINTON is now fading fast. It is more descriptive of the products available (/ = line break and [xxx] indicates where I cannot decipher some words):
PURVEYORS / OF / SCOTCH BRITSH BEEF / GRASS FED [xxx] / DAIRY FED [xxx] / VARIETY OF COOKED MEATS / Families [xxx] / or [xxx].
Hints of a later third sign are also evident though no discernible letterforms remain.
I'd love to see pics of how this sign would have looked in the past. If anyone has any archive images of this location, please do contact me via email or add links in the comments section below.

2 comments:

  1. Please tell me if you managed to find archival photos of this place and restore completely the inscriptions that were made here.

    ReplyDelete

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