The delightful details on the Palais de Danse ghostsign at Hammersmith station

First of all, sorry about the dodgy photos – these were taken on two occasions using my phone. I really ought to have returned with a better camera but at least this finally gets the ball rolling as, yet again, this has been festering for years...

Facing the platforms at the end of the tube line at Hammersmith there is a wall on which is painted a huge advertisement for the dance hall that used to be on the other side of that wall, the Palais-de-Dance, AKA Hammersmith Palais. You can see the wall on the google satellite view here. 

It's a multi-layered hand-painted sign with overlapping elements that I think date from at least two eras. The wall has been photographed often but, although people have noticed and queried the pricing structure within the panels at each end as being different (2 shillings and sixpence for the cheaper afternoon session, and either 5 shillings at one end or 5 and 6 at the other end for the evening slot) and the strange adjusted spelling of TWISE which was more evident a decade ago, I haven't as yet seen anyone else make reference to all the other bits and bobs (rather than shillings) on it. So here goes...

First of all, here are two wide shots where I have drastically enhanced the colour to give us an idea how wonderfully vibrant the sign would have been 100 years ago. The main letters look to have been blue. The letterforms look to have been overpainted – check out the truncations visible on the left legs of the As which, to me indicates that a later letterform was applied which, over time, has degraded such that what we see today is, in the mostpart, the original early 1920's version:

The outlined letterform reads: PALAIS-DE-DANSE... THE TALK OF LONDON ... HAMMERSMITH.

But, look closely and there's more... from left to right...

Either side of the first price panel, those two random dark blobs are actually illustrations of couples dancing:

In both cases, the man is in formal black and the lady is outlined in white. The stance looks to be almost identical, al though it would be if they were dancing to the same tune. The lady on the right side is wearing a floaty green dress.

Caroline wrote a short piece about this sign on her blog which better show the clothes depicted and her pic below from 2009 highlights how these illustrations have degraded in the last 16 years. 

It appears that the couple on the left were always headless! But other people had no bodies at all – if you zoom in via the link above you will see that there were pairs of dancing feet coming in at the top edge of the wall. These surely would have continued all the way along the full length of the sign..?

Moving on...

Between the S of Palais and the D of De there is the vague suggestion of what could be another figure/dancer surrounded by coloured circles or bubbles floating about. 

Then, between De and the D of Danse there is another couple dancing. She is also wearing a green dress. This lady has her back to us with her bare right arm up, elbow visible, her hand would be holding the gentleman's shoulder). His outlined left hand is at her waist, in the small of her back, complete with white cuff and black jacket sleeve. They are also surrounded by coloured bubbles:

A horizontal orange stripe contains the words So[le] Managing Director. Looking at the left side of the horizontal strip in the previous image, some additional letters can be discerned: "W." and "M" – this, I believe is W. F. Mitchell, whose name is on most the Palais' ads during this period (see pic at the bottom). Indeed, if I've got this right, Mitchell was responsible for bring syncopated jazz nights to us at these new 'palais' venues.

Underneath the stripe there are some more words, small black letters on white. At the time of writing all I can now decipher from my poor photos (because I can't locate the notes I surely must've scribbled when I was there!) is "...IGN Co. An.." – I am pretty sure that this will be the sign maker's name followed by the street/area where his business was located beginning with An. I've looked at some old London directories but cannot find a suitable contender, however, it occurs to me that this sign might have been painted by someone that Mitchell engaged from elsewhere.

Continuing our journey across the wall, the recent repairs, evident as vertical stripes of new brickwork, have affected the sign as a whole, but many illustrative elements are still visible...

...such as a man at the centre of this next image who looks to be either conducting the music or conjuring the bubbles that decorate the whole wall...

He is also dressed in formal attire. Placed behind the MER of Hammersmith, his hands reach forward to the left and his head is tossed back. He possibly has floppy hair, and the two black marks could be either spectacles a moustache. 

It looks as if a subsequent painted panel obliterated much of this section, as denoted by the line that runs vertically through the second M of Hammersmith.

After 'Hammersmith' there is what looks like the outline of another dancing couple, the lady's bent legs being the only real clue, but I am not sure what to make of the blackened shape twixt the H and their knees. 

I think it's fair to assume that there was another dancing couple at the extreme right edge, but nothing is visible today. 

Here's a repeat of the enhanced wide shot of this side:

The entrance to the Palais de Danse was in Shepher's Bush Road and the exterior in the 1920s would have looked like this, as shown in the ad below. It is not the same building that many of us remember today which was a 1930's rebuild, itself demolished c2010. Note that The Laurie Arms pub next door, still stands, albeit for some reason renamed.

If you have any better resolution images or further info, please do get in touch