Smithfield Garage, Birmingham

The former Smithfield Garage in Digbeth, an industrial district immediately to the east of Birmingham centre, has a date of 1923 above one of its entrances. According to Andy Foster, author of the Pevsner Architectural Guides. Birmingham, it was built by Harry Weedon, an architect best known for his Art Deco factories and the Odeon cinemas.

While the entrance above has a nice sign with raised letters made of cement, one has to look to the adjacent part of the building to find a long and colourful ghost sign painted on wood.

In the early 1960s Rover cars were available from Smithfield Garage Limited. However it is as a car dealer for Volkswagen / Audi and BMW, between the 1960s and the late 20th century, that Smithfield is essentially remembered. By then Smithfield had been taken over by Hartwell and the official name changed to Hartwell Smithfield.

Smithfield Garage Limited

This building may not be standing for much longer. Indeed redevelopment projects in the Digbeth area may have been put on hold because of the current economic crisis, but plans have already been approved and many former industrial buildings are bound to disappear sooner or later.

Given the length of this sign and the narrowness of the street, several pictures have been stitched to create the complete front view of the ghost sign below.

Location: Meriden Street / Pictures taken in May 2012

Bordesley cattle station, Birmingham

Bordesley station, on the former Great Western Railway (GWR) Oxford to Birmingham line, opened in 1855. Located near Birmingham's cattle markets (their location in Deritend and Digbeth changed over the years but they remained less than a kilometre away), the station included facilities to handle cattle trains. The cattle dock was on the northern side of the station, with access onto Upper Trinity Street. It made use of the space created when the Duddeston Viaduct was built and the shunting line extended onto the viaduct itself. It is on the parapet of this viaduct, one of the country's railway follies, that today's ghost sign can be found.

Looking at Duddeston Viaduct from the north. Bordesley Viaduct is in the background.
The latter carries the line of the former GWR across the Rea Valley, between Bordesley and Moor Street / the eastern portal of the Snow Hill tunnel.

Duddeston Viaduct in Birmingham is a folly indeed. It is the city's "Viaduct to Nowhere", a piece of Victorian engineering the Great Western Railway (GWR) never wanted to build and the London & North Western Railway (L&NWR) never really intended to use. Here is why.

The London & Birmingham Railway reached the city in 1838 and in cooperation with the Grand Junction Railway built a terminus in Curzon Street. However this station was inconveniently located on the northeastern edge of the city and over the following years the different companies serving the city lobbied local authorities and Parliament for the authorisation to build a more central station.

In 1846, the year the London & Birmingham Railway, the Grand Junction Railway, and the Manchester and Birmingham Railway merged to form the L&NWR, Parliament passed the Act authorising a new company, the Birmingham and Oxford Junction Railway, to lay its tracks between the two cities. For several years the L&NWR had managed to delay the approval of such a project. As it controlled most of the traffic between Birmingham and the south, the L&NWR did not want a new line that would connect with the tracks of the GWR at Oxford to be built as it would offer an alternative route to London (although to be fair, the route via Oxford to London Paddington was much longer than the direct L&NWR route into London Euston). The L&NWR did not lose out completely as the Act granted it running rights over the new line as far south as Banbury. Yet the L&NWR had to accept, reluctantly, to provide access to its Curzon Street station to the B&OJR. Thus in order to connect the tracks of the two companies, a viaduct was to be built by both companies between Bordesley and a point in the vicinity of Curzon Street station.

At the same time it voted the bill creating the B&OJR, Parliament authorized the construction of not one but two new stations closer to Birmingham city centre: New Street and Snow Hill. While New Street would be built by the L&NWR and the Midland Railway, Snow Hill was to be operated jointly by the Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Dudley Railway coming from the north and the B&OJR coming from the south. As they were to use the same facilities in Birmingham the latter two companies decided to merge during their first general meeting. Actually these were nothing but speculative railways, whose promoters, having been granted the right to build a line, sought to sell or lease them to one of the established railway companies for a large profit. In that case the directors approached the GWR, which agreed to pay £30 5s 0d for each £20 share! However the L&NWR countered the move by buying as much shares as it could to control the company, replace the board of directors, and get new ones to repudiate the deal with the GWR. The bitter battle between the L&NWR the GWR that ensued eventually ended in the House of Lords and in 1848 the Lord Chancellor ruled in favour of the original agreement with the GWR. Brunel's company had its access to Birmingham! Since the company it had acquired had been granted the right to build its own station, Snow Hill, and since its runnning rights on L&NWR's tracks did not extend beyond Curzon Street station into New Street, the GWR lost any interest in the link with the L&NWR. As for the L&NWR, it had no intention of using its running rights to Banbury. Yet in spite of this lack of interest on both sides, the L&NWR still insisted the GWR complied with the Act of Parliament and build the Duddeston viaduct.

Construction started c. 1848 and in February 1853 Brunel reported that his company had reached the limits of the L&NWR's property. However the rest of the viaduct was never built and the junction with the L&NWR at Curzon Street never made. To this day Duddeston viaduct ends abrupty after 325 metres and its brick arches stand as a memorial to the battle the two biggest railway companies in the country fought during the Railway Mania of the 1840s.

Bordesley
Cattle Station. G.W.R.

Note the manicule immediately to the left of 'Cattle' pointing towards the entrance of the cattle station in Upper Trinity Street.

Given its position on the north side of the viaduct, and since there is no equivalent on the south side, it can be assumed this ghost sign was painted after 1897. Indeed before that date the main livestock market was at Smithfield and this sign would not have been visible from the route taken by farmers and their cattle. In 1892 Birmingham Corporation decided to relocate the pig market from Smithfield to a site in Montague Street, further west from the centre (incidentally, this is the street where Duddeston Viaduct ends). Opposition from the pig trade delayed the move but it was eventually completed in 1897. One year later cows and sheep also left Smithfield for Montague Street. Heading from from Montague Street towards Bordesley Cattle Station, farmers would have gone southward and emerged into Adderley Street, where they would have been able to catch sight of this sign.

Bordesley goods station closed in 1964. The cattle station would have closed at the same time if not earlier.

The Warwickshire Railway website has a picture of some cattle wagons at Bordesley cattle station and information about the cattle trains.

Location: Adderley Street / Pictures taken in May 2012

Jack Daniel's, Birmingham

In the mid-noughties, painted adverts reproducing the label found on the bottles of Jack Daniel's started appearing outisde several pubs across Britain. The perpetuation of traditions features heavily in the advertising campaigns of the well-known brand of Tennessee whiskey and these adverts might have been designed to look like ghost signs. However a stencil and spray paint seem to have been used to produce them and I am not sure that with such a technique they achieved the desired effect. Had it been done on a brick surface the result might have looked more authentic but in the case below it looks slightly too fake to me. Having said that it is not a bad sign.

The lower part of the advert is now hidden by the box with the extractor fans (click here to see a picture of the full sign). As a result the responsibility message that the alcohol industries agreed to include in its advertisement has disappeared.

Made In Tennesse		Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 Brand Tenessee Whiskey		Bottled At The Distillery
[Your Friends At Jack Daniel's Remind You To Drink Responsibly]

Location: Adderley Street / Pictures taken in May 2012

Player's Navy Cut, Birmingham

Yesterday's ghost sign for the Continental Cafe was not the only one painted on this building in the Diritend district of Birmingham. High above the street and looming partly above the roof next door another ghost sign can be seen indeed.

Even though half of it is now missing, it is possible to recognise an advert for Player's Navy Cut cigarettes. This version is far less elaborate than the ones found in Shepherd's Bush or Homerton.

Player's
Navy Cut
Cigarettes

Location: High Street Deritend / Pictures taken in May 2012

Cafe, Birmingham

A very simple sign painted for the Continental Cafe, which closed down several years ago. The name was still visible in 2009 on the fascia above the entrance but it has since disappeared. Very faint traces of letters emerging here and there suggest another sign was originally painted on this wall.

Cafe

Location: High Street Deritend / Picture taken in May 2012

Robinsons depositories, Birmingham

Robinsons' furniture depository in Birmingham was built in the early 1920s. At the time this huge warehouse was one of the most modern ones in Europe. Thanks to its powerful vehicle lift, the company's trucks could access all floors. During the Second World War nine incendiary bombs fell on the warehouse but the six inches of sand spread across the attics ensured it survived! By the late 1990s the warehouse was becoming too costly to operate. Robinsons built a new facility in the city and to put its original one on the market. Nowadays its been converted into flats. The sign was certainly repainted when work was carried out around 2002-2003.

Removals
Robinsons
Furniture Depositories

With regards to the removals and storaage company, it was founded by Alfred Robinson in Manchester in 1885. It is still controlled by his descendants.

Location: Moseley Road / Pictures taken in May 2012

And son, Birmingham

A building on Moseley Road, on the outskirts of Birmingham, has not one but two ghost signs, one on each side. The first one is the unique 75 year old sign for Butlin's holiday camp. As for the second one, so much of it has disappeared that it is impossible to link it to any business. The lettering, dark letters with a red shadow, would suggest it is even older than the Butlin's one but I cannot be sure.

...
& Son
C... ...
...e
Co...rn...
& H... ...
Of E...
...

Location: Moseley Road / Picture taken in May 2012

Ladies and gents hairdresser, Birmingham

The elaborate ghost sign promoting F. Price's ladies and gents hairdressing saloon was painted over one, maybe even two, older signs. This is particularly visible on the first and last lines, which are a mumbo jumbo of traces of letters from each sign.

...
Ladies & Gents
F. Price
Hairdresser
...

Location: Moseley Road / Pictures taken in May 2012

Butlin's holiday camp, Birmingham

As this blog reaches its 600^th post, I needed something special to mark the occasion. This why I take you once more to Birmingham for a rather rare sign for Butlin's from the late 1930s.

Take Your ...
Butlin's
Skegness
Holiday Camp
-------
Four Good Meals A Day,
Free Amusements,
All For
£2"5"0 per ... *

*: £2"5"0 is a pre-decimalisation (1971) price and would read as two pounds, five shillings and zero pence.

Another sign was painted on this space at some point but I have only been able to decipher a couple of letter at the same level as the horizontal black line:

...bin

Billy Butlin, who headed a funfair empire, opened his first holiday camp in Skegness on the Lincolnshire coast on April 11, 1936. It had rows of cabins for 1,000 campers and offered all sorts of fun activities throughout the day. Accommodation was relatively basic but at a time when most holidaymakers had to be out regardless of the weather because B&Bs closed during the day and had to pay extra for any attraction, the idea of an all inclusive camp was quite radical and tempting. Two years later another holiday camp opened in Clacton on the Essex coast, just in time for the first paid holidays for working-class employees (The Holiday with Pay Act, something Billy Butlin had been campaigning for, was passed in 1938). That year one of Butlin's slogans was "A week’s holiday for a week’s pay." More camps were planned but because of the Second World War these were handed to the military. Once the war was over, they were returned to Butlin's. Between 1945 and 1966, the company opened eight more camps, including one in Ireland and one in the Bahamas.

The heyday of Butlin's was between the early 1950s and early 1970s, when it was seen by many in Britain as the perfect resort for a family holiday. However, even if Butlin's share of the holiday market remained strong, by the 1960s cheap package holidays in the Mediterranean became available and an increasing number of families opted to leave the uncertainties of the British weather behind (and the slightly too regimented holiday camps of Butlin's and its competitors). Billy Butlin left the company in 1868. Four years later his son sold it the Rank Organisation, which proved unable to halt its decline. Several camps closed or were rebranded in the 1980s and the company's sold all the hotels it had bought or built over the previous two decades. In 1998 Butlin's was bought by Bourne Leisure. The new owners kept the brand for the three camps still in operation: Skegness, Bognor Regis and Minehead.

Since 1937, entertainers and stewards at Butlin's have been wearing the famous red jacket, hence their name Redcoats. However on this ghost sign, the entertainer wears a green jacket with white lapels and a white hat. In his raised hand he holds a drum stick while the drum is held by the two yellow straps (originally certainly brown) down his chest. With his round face, his smile and his moustache, he bears a resemblance to Billy Butlin.

Thanks to the presence of this character, the prices quoted and the fact that only the Skegness holiday camp is mentioned, we can get a pretty good idea when this ghost sign was painted. Even if the face and position of the body are different, the entertainer is very similar to the one featured on a 1937 poster for the LNER (London & North Eastern Railway). When Butlin's Skegness opened, prices for a week's holiday between July and September cost £2.12s.6d per adult (equivalent today to around £133) With inflation of 0.7% in 1936 and 3.4% in 1937, it is reasonable to assumed the price on the ghost sign corresponds to the 1937 or 1938 season (although for 1938 one might have expected Clacton to be advertised alongside Skegness). Finally if this ghost sign had been painted at a later date, the costume of the entertainer would certainly have been red as the Redcoats rapidly became one of Butlin's trademarks. Therefore this ghost sign must be 75 years old.

Location: Moseley Road / Pictures taken in May 2012

I. Sutcliffe, Birmingham

Isherwood Sutcliffe, born in 1807, certainly established his varnish making business in 1849, the year he moved to 27 Great Hampton Street. Two years later he took part in the Great Exhibition. The Official Catalogue lists some of the products he exhibited in the impressive Crystal Palace erected in Hyde Park, London: ornamental papier-maché, trays, loo-table, work-tables, vases, folios, caddies, work-boxes, ink-stands, etc. (one of his papier-maché trays, made at an unknown date, can be seen here).
Other than varnish manufacturer, several publications give his profession as bronzer or japanner, both quite unsual in today's world.
Isherwood Sutcliffe died in 1871 and was buried at Warstone Lane Cemetery in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. A peculiar headstone designed by L. W. Sutcliffe was erected on his tomb in 1888.

The company survived for 41 years after the death of its founder but in 1912 it went into winding-up. A liquidator was called in and the assets of Isherwood Sutcliffe & Co Ltd were disposed of.

Established ...
I. Sutcliffe
Maker of Varnishes
Paints. Colours
Wholesale & Retail
... Turpentine. Tar
Parafin

Location: Great Hampton Street / Pictures taken in May 2012

Office furniture, Birmingham

Built between 1840 and 1850 as houses, 2 and 3 Great Hampton Street had their upper floors adapted as workshops shortly afterwards. At No. 3 a series of ghost signs reveal the name and activities of the different companies that operated within these walls.

Several occupants have left their marks indeed but it is difficult to tell which parts of the ghost signs go together. That's why I just put all I could decipher in one block

Hall & Co
..m...ate Ho... / Manufacturers
... ... / Shet... *		Speciality Cas... Goods		.esert... *
Office Furniture
Ho.. [Home?] And Export

/: indicates successive ghost signs written at the same level
*: these two words are written diagonally with a completely different typeface from the rest.

The only occupant of 3 Great Hampton Street I have been able to trace was George Kelland, a milliner who certainly occupied the ground floor shop in 1878. Nothing about any of the businesses responsible for the ghost signs on the façade though.

Both buildings, which are grade II listed, are in a pretty sad state and if they were to remain empty for much longer, their long term future may be jeopardized.

Location: Great Hampton Street / Pictures taken in May 2012

Ales and stouts, Birmingham

From the main part of the former White Horse Cellars (see yesterday's post), a wing extends along Northwood Street. On its side wall is another ghost sign, this time not for wines and spirits but ales and stouts.

Unfortunately only the last line can still be read.

Ales & Souts

Location: Northwood Street / Pictures taken in May 2012

Wines and Spirits, Birmingham

The former White Horse Cellars, on Constitution Hill, is the only public house designed by J. A. Chatwin c. 1885-1890. The pub closed down in 1999 and remained empty for a few years, until an off-licence opened within its walls. The building may be listed but that didn't prevent the new occupants from defacing it with their utterly unsightly signs.

At least they didn't manage to hide the ghost sign, which runs along the main block, starting on Constitution Hill and finishing round the corner on Northwood Street.

Importer and Bonder

Of Wines & Spirits

Location: Constitution Hill / Pictures taken in May 2012

H. Morrall, Birmingham

The building where Aerlec (Aluminium) Ltd was based for a very short period was previously home to two businesses if not three as suggested by the ghost signs on its façade. However only one can be fully identidied: H. Morrall, Conveyor & Engineering Co. Ltd.

Indeed the part of the façade at ground floor level that hasn't been rebuilt still bears the marks left by previous occupants. As a result the ghost signs on the arches above the entrances and blocked windows are little palimpsests, only one of which I managed to decipher. More ghost signs were painted against a cream background on each side of the openings.

Unfortunately a quick search on the web by name, occupation and addresses did not return any information about these businesses.

...e...
Specialities
...
So... ...ers
... Makers
...oners
...
...

H. Morrall

Something else was originally written there but only a couple of letters can be made out.

&

Conveyor &

This was painted over

Cabinet

Only very faint traces of letters can be seen here. Nothing that makes sense.

Engineering

Co. Ltd.

Here as well something else was written originally but I can't identify any of it.

...s..d...
Mill No. ...
Scotland
Cartside Mills
Millikenpark. N...
Warehouses
London
Manchester
Glasgow
...

Cartside Mills, built in the 1790s, was one the first cotton mills in Scotland. After the Second World War it was home to Smith and McLaurin's Paper Mill. However none of these activities seem to be connected to the ones carried out in this Birmingham building. Unless of course the ghost signs painted on the cream background have nothing to do with what can still be read on the arcades and refer to another occupant involved in the cotton trade. This is most likely.

Location: Bond Street / Pictures taken in May 2012

Aerlec (Aluminium) Ltd, Birmingham

Bond Street is home to many fashionable and expensive shops. But that's Bond Street, London. In Birmingham, Bond Street runs through a largely unattractive industrial area to the north west of the city center. However for those interested in industrial archeology the area isn't without interest and Constitution Hill nearby has some good examples of Victorian architecture.

Over the years companies have come and gone but some of them have left their marks on the buildings. One of these was Aerlec (Aluminium) Ltd, which was temporarily based in Bond Street.
As the name suggests, it was a manufacturer of aluminium alloy. It also stocked sheets, rods and tubes. The company is first mentioned in 1939 in two journals for the aviation industry. Indeed airplane manufacturers and plane maintenance companies seem to have been its main customers.

...
Aerlec
(Aluminium) Ltd

Birmingham was heavily bombed during the Second World War and this may have prompted Aerlec (Aluminium) Ltd to relocate to Stoke Wharf, just south of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire. Another reason for the relocation may have been the sale in 1942 by G. S. James, the company's chairman and managing director, of all his shares to British Emulsifiers Ltd for £450,000. The acquisition of Aerlec allowed British Emulsifier Ltd to secure a continuous supply of aluminium alloy.
Aerlec (Aluminium) Ltd continued to trade under its name throughout the second half of the 1940s and most of the 1950s, supplying semi-fabricated aluminium aircraft components. In 1954 the company was sold to Metals & Ores Ltd, which kept the name for another four years but then seems to have dropped it as there are no more mentions of Aerlec in the press after 1958. Metals & Ores moved out of Bromsgrove at some point. The site of the former Aerlec factory is still known as the Metals & Ores trading estate.

This ghost sign must date from the late 1930s as it seems Aerlec (Aluminium) Ltd did not stay in Birmingham for long.

Location: Bond Street / Pictures taken in May 2012