Christmas Day 2022 looking at Art Deco architecture and ghosts of the past

I hope you spent Christmas Day doing something that makes you happy, because I surely did.

A friend picked me up in his car and we headed to NW London where we at first pootled around the streets either side of Scrubs Lane in North Kensington and East Acton, specifically in the industrial estates around Willesden Junction. 

Ooh I love a well-designed old factory building, especially one that pre-dates WWII, such as this fine example which wa originally constructed as the Rolls Royce manufactory. 

We then investigated the upper slopes of Counters Creek, one of the mostly-disappeared Thames' tributaries that, as it makes its way southwards from its source somewhere near Kensal Green Cemetery, becomes Chelsea Creek, for obvious reasons. 

From there we made our way down Old Oak Lane, stopping to lament at the sad loss of a lovely old green and gold shop front that was once W. Burrow & Sons Fish and Chip Restaurant. 

These pics show how the shop used to look back in January 2009 but there's nothing left of it today except the hand-painted sign, high up on on the east side of that building, hinting at a world before UPVC windows.

Further south, we investigated the buildings in Warple Way and Stanley Gardens, an area that used to be railway sidings. 

Acton's main shopping streets boast some interesting old shop fronts and repurposed buildings plus quite a few ghost signs of various kinds. We tried to decipher the letters in the multi-layered ghost sign on the East-facing wall above 265 Uxbridge Road. There's at least two signs there. The earlier one is black script on yellow and a later sign is red on white. I will return to this at another date when I've got more time to work it out.

And so to the A4, the Great West Road, the main arterial thoroughfare cutting through Brentford. We were specifically interested in the short stretch of road just west of the River Brent which boasts many excellent examples of interwar architectural elegance. Consider that these fine constructions, which resemble cinemas or grand hotels, were actually built as factories!  

These temples to industry were constructed for Gillette, Pyrene, Coty and Firestone, the last of which only the gateposts remain after the vicious demolition of the main building on August Bank Holiday Monday 1980. 

A fab day out. 

Shown here are some pics I took with my phone. I took lots more, but they're on my camera. i need more hours in the day, more days in the week...

Hendon ghostsigns

In my previous post I wrote about a drive about in London on Christmas Day which somehow included a jaunt up the A5 to Colindale. On the way back we stoppped along Hendon Broadway to check on a few ghostsigns. The street has a sense of Victorian-into-Edwardian faded glory. The last time I had a good wander about there was 2011 and I was keen to see how many of the signs I'd seen back then were still visible today.

The first old hand-painted sign that looms into view on the left as you head northwards, above what is now Aladin's Kebabs at No.147-9, is a sign for George Frederick Kruse. Left of the window it's easy to make out 'Estate Agent' in angled Coca-Cola-esque script complete with what I call an underswoosh. Above that, to the extreme right, immediately above the horizontal bar between the windows, there are remnants of some lettering that I think includes '[Local?] & Adjacent Districts' and 'APPLY' which could be followed with 'within' as has been suggested, but I am not so sure about that seeing as the much easier to decipher section below directs us to another address:
GEO. F. KRUSE (in an arc) / 50(?) YEARS IN HENDON / AUCTIONEER & ESTATE / –> AGENTS <– / Opposite Hendon Statn. N.W.4 / PHONE HENDON 1115. / Management of Property a Speciality

The estate agent shop at 32 Station Road would have been directly opposite the Hendon railway station here – there is no number 32 there today and the postcode written on the sign is given as NW4 which is the eastern side of the tracks.

I did a quick bit of googling and discovered in the National Archives that during WW1, George, then living at just round the corner at 89 Audley Road, NW4, appealed for exclusion from National Service, claiming that 'serious hardship would ensue' due to his 'exceptional finance or business obligations' – I haven't pursued this any further as yet to see if he was successful. 

Just up the road from here, at No.163 on the north-facing side overlooking Milton Road, is another faded sign advertising dairy products. It's fairly obvious that the who wall was once slatered in lettering and there have been many over-paintings throughout the decades which are hard to decipher today. However, eleven years ago I could clearly see that the centre section read: "BARRIES / FOR PURE / MILK" – I haven't been able to ascertain if thtis was alocal company name or a product.

If you spin round from the Barries sign and look north along the same side of the road, you'll see at the side of No.177 there is a nice surprise – a boxed sign used to cover a large proportion of this wall and it has in the last few months been removed to reveal elements of a Gillette safety razor ad. there are also hints of other layers of signage here – a palimpsest of advertising on this south-facing side wall.
I think the very large red lettering is for DAILY MAIL and there are other panels of faded blues and reds. Black block lettering at low level reads 'FOR SALE' with a more friendly script in white behined or over the top of it.
How jolly intriguing and this must look fab on a sunny day with better light.

Further up the road there has been a fair bit of demoliton, rebuild and renovation since I was last there and this has meant the loss of two Co-operative Society signs. One used to be on the north-facing side of No.197 with a second, south-facing sign on No.201. The second one, shown last here, was a sign I particularly meant to return to another day when the light was better and I was armed with a good zoom lens, because it had lots of white block lettering at the top and, in a sort of script at the bottom, it read: '...other members'.
It's interesting that a Co-op grocery store today occupies the site.

For more research on all of these signs, indeed the changing face of this street, more info would require access to the old Middlesex directories or a visit to the Hendon archives. Any feedback welcome.  

Voting now open for Ghostsigns calendar

As above... voting is now open for Sam's 2014 Ghostsigns Calendar.

There are some great images to choose from from all around the world.

Be sure to cast your vote by Friday 22nd November.

There are still a few days left to submit your own photos.

See my previous post about this.

Here are some of my shots of London ghostsigns featuring old ads for Gillette razors:

Gillette ghost signs

Here are my nine London Gillette signs. Some of them aren't immediately obvious as they are hidden behind other ads for newspapers, remedies and matches. 
Click the montage above to view it at a larger size, or to see each one separately click here.

Clockwise from top left: Grays Inn Road, Peckham, Kings Road, Stoke Newington, Dalston, Kilburn, Spitalfields, Acton, and in the centre, Clapham.

There are others I know of in Willesden and Southwark, and maybe a few more, but I haven't taken any photos of them myself (yet!).

London Ghost signs

These wonderful ghosted advertisements are mainly to be found on the sides of shops and buildings along old high streets. Here is just a small selection.

A larger collection of my photos of ghost signs, and other things that interest me, can be found at www.flickr.com/photos/janepbr

Shown above are:

Gillette in Commercial Street E1;

Wootons Cash Chemist in Richmond Avenue N1;

tea rooms in Museum Street WC2, Bate's salve ('...cures wounds and sores' which overprints an earlier one for '...Kings citrate the original safe and best') in Regent Square WC1;

The front of a building owned by Miller Beale and Hider Ltd glazing contractor which appears to read 'builders...' over/under another sign I can't quite read in Greenland Road NW1 (I now have better photos of this building and will upload them soon);

Take Courage just west of Borough Market SE1;

Bernard' s mens hosier, hatter (and something else I can't make out) which overprints an earlier sign for P(?) Lewis in Brick Lane E1;

pianos and carpets just off Hornsey Road N7;

Boots in Camden High Street NW1 (you save vouchers by shopping at Boots);

upholsterer's sundries in great Eastern Street EC2;

Key Flats in Caledonian Road N7