Estate Agent ghostsign at Fulham Broadway Station.

I can’t be the only one now singing “I could be the ticket man at Fulham Broadway Station” from Ian Dury’s What A Waste. 

It was about 15 years ago when I first noticed this sign at the top of the stairs that links the platforms to the original Grade II listed station building at street level. When the station was built, this area was known as Walham Green.

On that occasion I hung back and waited to let the other travellers pass me as I took some snaps, thinking I’d look into it when I got home.  But it got shelved. It got lost in the 'To Do' folder. I got distracted by other things. Life got in the way.

I’ve since used the station often and almost every time I'm there I take a quick pic to nudge myself into action but it still festers in my In tray. Yesterday, I was back again and, whilst taking these photos, it occurred to me that fewer people notice it since the station entrance was relocated to the other end of the platforms within the modern shopping centre, this original exit staircase now acting merely as a means to access the opposite platform. 

Having done a quick google and, found nothing but a few photos out there, and with 15 years of procrastination under my belt, I think it's about time I had a go at deciphering it, so here goes... 

At the extreme top left, a section is headed ‘Phone Nos’:
KENSINGTON 2513
CITY 3559
RICHMOND 843.
There are also some faded words at an angle to the left of that which could be ‘Selected… at… ton’ 

At the top right are the addresses of the ‘Offices’:
THE BROADWAY, WALHAM GREEN
28 ST MARTIN'S LANE, CANNON ST
AND AT ACTON.
To the extreme right at an angle: NORBURY / NEW MALDEN

Most of the advertisement looks to have been covered, and indeed protected by, posters of various sizes and shapes. The centre section in particular, below ESTATE AGENT, still has lots to offer. This area was looking really grubby covered in a mix of glue and dust, as shown in StockCarPete's 2011 pic, but it was cleaned, which is great but this has meant we've lost some of the hand-painted letters. 

The words I can't quite decipher are in [square brackets]:

PROBATE & [M..R..E..G]

INCOME TAX ADJUSTED

Freehold & Leasehold Houses

can be Purchased [ov?] Pav[inor?]

£50 down & Balance as Re[nt?]

Businesses Sold & Transferred

INSURANCES EFFECTED

[?..] Principal Offices.

Freehold Building Land for

[?..] Sale[?] & Advance In[?vestment/surance]

I'm pretty sure the company advertised here is John Crawford Platt, auctioneer, who was at No.561 Fulham Road (opposite side to the station, near the Town Hall) in the 1890s until at least 1915. 

I'm struggling to understand the second address listed as St Martin's Lane, Cannon St, which surely cannot be one and the same – 28 St Martin’s Lane is The Chandos public house near Trafalgar Square. The ref to Cannon Street might suggest an offce within a building by the name of St Martin, but there are no churches of that name in The City of London except St Martin's Le Grand which I am ruling out because that's other side of St Pauls to Cannon Street.

J.C.Platt seems to have quit Walham Green/Fulham Broadway, and all other branches, by the 1930s to consolidate the company's efforts in Hammersmith, as shown in the1939 directory, below. There are a couple of lovely J.C Platt wall signs to be found in the Hammersmith and Fulham area here and here.  

I know realise that I need to go back and have a closer look at the bottom right section of the sign because, as with the panel deciphered above, there surely must be something discernible in there. But until then, my work here is done until I find more/better info – any additional reference welcome.

Read about other ghostsigns for estate agents here in Hendon. and here in Goldhawk Road and here

Ghostsigns in Goldhawk Road, W12

Last week I wrote about a ghost sign in Uxbridge Road and said I'd find out more info about some of the others in that area.

Starting at Ravenscourt Park (western) end of Goldhawk Road, this Brymay matches sign on end of King's Parade, has seen better days. The pic to the right shows how it looked when I photographed it in 2008. There's only about half of it there now, thanks to the insertion of a multi-level extension, and what remains of the lettering is now rather faded. It makes a kind of top and tail with another Brymay sign on Shepherds Bush Green

But, not far away from there, I was extremely pleased to find that one of my favourite 'hidden' gems is still intact, albeit obscured by Melville Court and a large fir tree on the side of No.1 Cathnor Street. It is an ad for Herbert W. Dunphy, a local estate agent. It could be argued that this doesn't really qualify as a ghost sign being as his company is still trading today albeit with a slightly different name. 

The company1908 office was at 162 Goldhawk Road, and they later expanded into No.164 – see Google Streetview 2008. Today they're only at No 164 and if you look closely patches of paint there make it evident that the whole building was once covered with a painted advertisement. A modern banner affixed to the side shows the company today is 'Dunphy and Hayes'. I checked their website for more info... if you scroll down to the bottom here and read the small white text under the company logo, you'll see that they offer 'efficiant' and 'propfessional' services with 'qaulity' assurance. Oh dear! I wonder what Herbert would have made of that?!

Heading eastwards towards Shepherds Bush, there's another ghostsign, this time on the end of Goldolphin Road, on the side of No.152 Goldhawk Road. This, in the 1930s, was a colour merchant's shop, with Shaw Motors on the garden at the rear. Indeed, Dolphin Cars still trade out of that space. Try as I might, I really cannot fathom the lettering on the sign. There looks to have been at least two over-paintings, though I am sure I see 'THE' centred at the very top and 'LONDON' along the bottom edge. Ideas welcome. 

Note some gorgeous old shops on the opposite side of Godhawk Rd at 155-161, three of which retain curved window frames etc.   

And so back to Uxbridge Rd... 

Opposite the Player's cigarette ad, there is a tantalising glimpse of an ad under laters of white paint on an east-facing wall that has later been partly obscured by a building next door. With so little to go on, it's hard to ascertain whether this was a sign for a business at that location or a managed rental site. I haven't managed to decipher anything here as yet, except that there looks to be '...ES' about a third of the way down on the right edge. I wonder if this might have been an old Nestlé ad? 

As ever, any help or further info is always welcome. Please either use the comments facility or contact me at jane@janeslondon.com

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.  

Hanging on in there in York Way

Just north of the railway line at 186 York Way, over the road from what used to be Maiden Lane railway station, just one old Victorian building remains squished in amongst the new builds.
How very strange.
And it's sort of ironic that it's home to an estate agent.

This district has seen big changes and lots of redevelopment in the past few decades. It used to be a very smelly area known as Belle Isle – a rather misleading name considering the stinky, noxious, businesses that were – most of the companies here were linked in some way to the nearby Caledonian meat market.
My old directories show me that for at least the period 1895–1915 this particular building was occupied by Harris, Barber & Son, horse slaughters. And to the rear there was 'Pleasant Grove'. There's still Vale Royal just down the hill. Maiden Lane, the earlier name of York Way/Rd, was actually a ref to 'midden' meaning a rubbish heap.