Homepride Wallpapers ghostsign, Walworth Road, SE17

Every time I pass this Homepride Wallpapers ghostsign at 214 Walworth Road it brings a smile to my face because it takes me back in time to the 1970s when many lads wore shirts featuring a repeated pattern of little bowler-hatted Homepride Flour men. I had hoped to be able to link to a pic of a vintage shirt here but I can find nothing available, so if you've still got one of these gems, it's now clearly a collectors' piece. I did find this TV ad though – graded grains make finer flour!

To me, this painted sign conjures up mental images of walls covered in the same Homepride flour men. But where in your home would you paste it? In the kitchen, I suppose, near the larder, and surely only on one feature wall. Sounds like a ridiculous idea, but back in the day, young men who probably couldn't boil eggs, wore those shirts!

Ah, but this ghostsign pre-dates the flour. This is 'homepride' as in a pride in one's home. In the 1930s the shop at No.214 was home to Globe Art, wall paper manufacturers and the 1939 directory shows that the company had quite a few outlets in South London:

I have not as yet ascertained which of these address was the actual manufactory (tho I suspect it was most likely the Tower Bridge address where Haddon Hall now sits) but it is amusing to notice that the phone code for the Walworth Rd location and the Peckham High St shop used to be 'Rodney' as in Del Boy etc – I wonder if John Sullivan knew that when he wrote the sitcom...?

Wall coverings inspired by the Trotters' flat in Only Fools and Horses are suggested here!

St James's Market, Piccadilly, SW1

Last week I was wandering down towards Waterloo Place from Piccadilly and noticed that the area that once was St James's Market is surrounded by hoardings and in the process of being renovated.

So I looked up The Crowne Estate's site hoping to find that a street market might be included in the plans. Nope. 

However, this pdf (from the Useful Docs section) includes some interesting information about the plans plus some history of the site. 

For your delectation I am here including the lovely pics and historical info that can be found on page 7.

Job done

Do it yourself

This week’s Time Out (No.2018) has a feature about DIY. It encourages us all, in these ‘tough’ times, to save a bit of money, get out the toolbox and fix things around our homes ourselves.

Home improvement by the homeowner, whether for repair or to keep up with the latest styles, isn’t a new thing by any means as we have been building, renovating and improving our own homes since we learned to stand up and walk and clean out the cave.

The phrase ‘do it yourself’ was coined in the 1950s and quickly abbreviated to DIY. The 50s was a boom time for DIY with the fad for modernism and clean lines. Since that decade we have been discovering and renovating the paneled doors and ornate fireplaces hidden by our granddads back when he thought it was a good idea to encase them in hardboard and cover everything with wood-chip wallpaper (also known as ingrain paper). I have today discovered, that the wood-chip process was invented way back in 1864 by a German pharmacist Hugo Erfurt but not used as wallpaper until the 1920s – well, well!

Even the Victorians weren’t averse to doing it for themselves – in one chapter of the brilliant* The Diary of a Nobody, which originally appeared in Punch in 1888, Mr Pooter gets busy with two tins of Pinkfords red enamel paint. He paints all sorts of things around the house such as flower-pots, a washstand, a chest of drawers and even the spines of his Shakespeare books. He then goes on to paint the bath with diastrous results.

Anyway, it occured to me that I have taken quite a few pictures of ghost signs that relate to this subject, either on the shops that sold items for the DIY enthusiast, or as advertisements for traders such as builders and decorators. A selection is shown below and, as usual, you can find them and more at Flickr.

Column 1: G. Purkiss, Fulham; Chas B, Hampstead; H. Callcut & Son, Highbury.

Column 2: Miller Beale & Hider, Camden; John Hirst, Dartmouth Park; Magicote Paint, Chiswick; James Rugg, Earls Court.

Column 3: R.V. Amey, Walthamsotw; A. Davey, Portobello; Builders Merchants, Highbury; Claude Bastable, Willesden Junction; Brooke, Upper Clapton; Builders, Earls Court.

Column 4: Cakebread Robey & Co., Stoke Newington; Builders' Ironmongery, Shepherd's Bush; R. Hewett, Acton.

And here are three old-style independant DIY shops that are still trading today.

From left to right in Dalston, Willesden Green and Clapham:

*when I say ‘brilliant’ I mean the original book, not the disappointing BBC4 adaption starring Hugh Bonneville.