Goodbye to True Form, Wimbledon

Not quite R.I.P. for the True Form ghost sign on Wimbledon Broadway but my guess is it won't reappear for some years. The brand new billboard that hides it is even larger than the one that covered it a few years ago. For the text of the ghost sign and some information about the True-Form Boot Company, please go to the original post.

March 2008
February 2009
March 2012
Location: The Broadway

Gibberd's Boots, Wimbledon

From the design of the letters, it was obvious this sign was promoting a shoemaker or seller rather than Boots the Chemist. Yet when I took this picture back in spring 2008, a plant growing on the ballustrade hid whatever else was written there. Thus I headed towards the local library, where I found a picture of the building taken in the early 20th century and showing a shop by the name of Gibberd's Boots. Could it have been that name painted up there?


Then the invading plant was cut but as the plane trees still had their leaves, I had to wait until winter to get a slightly better picture. Unfortunately it is still impossible to get the whole sign but enough of the first part emerged to confirm what I had suspected.

Gibberd's Boots
Location: The Broadway / Pictures taken on: 21/04/2008 and 24/02/2011

Cliff's Corner, South Wimbledon

Everytime I see this shop sign, I wonder whether it will be there for much longer. It hangs above the eastern corner of a parade of shops. Most of the premises were empty for some years but some businesses moved in recently. Still, in the current economic climate, the one at the corner may remain unoccupied for a while.


It looks as if over the years this part of the building saw a succession of shops, the last one being certainly that of R. M. Walsh, whose name is visible on the street façade. Although the sign for the shop known as Cliff's Corner seems to be as old as the building itself, a close look reveals this piece of wood had already carried two signs before: "Cliff's" was painted over "Teas", and between the two lines of "Cliff's Corner", one can see "Lock up Mo...".


Although the other piece of wood over the entrance has been scraped and repainted, it is still possible to read a couple of words and distinguish some overlapping letters.

... ...ice
... ... Great
Gold ...
Location: Merton High Street / Pictures taken on: 14/03/2008 and 24/02/2011

Fred Palmer, South Wimbledon

Inspired by the amazing work of Peter Vogel at Nutmegger Workshop across the pond, this week is going to be about shop signage painted on wood.
The series starts with Fred Palmer the cash butcher. Sadly this very attractive example of Victorian shop signage, which had been hidden behind a more modern one, re-emerged for a few days only in early 2009, when the new owners of the shop converted it to office use. Then, instead of covering it again, Yelfy at Faded London tells us they removed it and certainly dumped it in some rubbish tip. Vandals!
In Victorian times many customers had accounts in the shops they visited regularly and only paid once a week, a fortnight, or a month. This system may have worked well in middle and upper middle-class areas, but in poorer parts of the country, where people struggled to make ends meet, shopkeepers didn't want to risk losing out and demanded each purchase was paid immediately. Fred Palmer was one of these, hence the "cash" added to the nature of his trade.


Fred Palmer's customers may not have been extremely wealthy but that did not prevent him from getting an elaborate signage. Click on the pictures below to check the complexity of the lettering, with its black and red shades. A close look also shows the sign painter had originally thought of a different design.


Location: Merton High Street / Picture taken on: 20/02/2009

Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society, South Wimbledon

As mentioned yesterday, there is nothing left of this sign at all. It promoted the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society (RACS), a consumer co-operative whose origins dated back to 1868. Then called the Royal Arsenal Supply Association, it changed its name four years later to RACS. It offered a whole range of products and services to its members, and paid them a dividend, which depended on how much they had spent in its outlets. From its base in Woolwich, the RACS expanded throughout South London (they opened only one shop north of the Thames, in North Woolwich) and the surrounding counties. At its peak, it had more than half a million members. However by the 1970s, like many co-operative societies, it faced growing competition from supermarkets and experienced a sharp decline in members and revenue. In 1985 it merged with the South Suburban Co-operative Society to form the Co-operative Wholesale Society. To find out more about the RACS, you can check the wikipedia page.
This sign was painted on two occasions at least.

RACS [written diagonally]

... to Glisteners ... Dividend & Interest [*]

Royal Arsenal [**]
Co-operative Society
*: 'Divident & Interest' was painted twice.
**: only the 'A' of Arsenal is still visibile. The rest of the word was covered by 'Interest'. To the right of 'Interest' is a 'Y' but I can't connect it with anything else.

As for the big white 'bubble' with a black shade, I don't know what it does there.

Location: Haydon Road / Picture taken on 14/03/2008

Mixed news from Merton

I've just spent the afternoon around Wimbledon and Tooting, where unfortunately three ghost signs are gone.

• Gillette on Coverton Road wasn't an easy one to spot, but now an extra coat of white paint has been splashed on it,
• a house has been built next to Tooting station on Mitcham Road. It rests on the wall on which the sign for Gorringe Park was painted,
• the sign for the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society at the junction of Haydon Road and Merton High Street has been completely erased (check tomorrow's post). The billboard, which hid most of it, is gone as well, but the wall has been thoroughly cleaned with a Kärcher. There's hardly a trace of paint left.

On a slightly more positive note, the billboards that hid the signs on Hartfield Road and Rogers Road have been removed. However if you thought something quite amazing would emerge, you may be disappointed. Both walls were painted black before the billboards were put and only fragments can be deciphered. I'll post some pictures and let you know whatever I managed to read soon.

Townsend, Wimbledon

For years part of this sign remained hidden by a modern billboard. As dirt accumulated between the billboard and the wall, and traces of yesteryear's air contamination didn't get washed away by rain, the formerly hidden third is darker and dirtier than the part that has been exposed for longer.

Townsend & Son
Tailors, Outfitters,
Hosiers & Hatters.
Location: Hamilton Road / Picture taken on: 30/03/2009

Fenner's, Wimbledon

Commuters who turned south as they came out of Haydons Road train station in Wimbledon would certainly have noticed this large sign for a local grocery shop. Nowadays the premises are occupied by the Wimbledon Upholstery.

Fenner's
Grocery &
Oil Stores
All Household Requisites
Location: Queen Street / Picture taken on: 14/03/2008

True-Form shoes, Wimbledon

The names Sears and True-Form have already appeared on this blog in a post about footwear retailers Freeman, Hardy & Willis.

The True-Form Boot Company was founded by John (known as Jack) Sears, from Nottigham in the late nineteenth century. In 1884, at the age of 14, Jack Sears left school to train as a cobbler. Once his apprenticeship was over, he decided to open his own business. He began by repairing shoes and soon after started making bespoke models with the help of his wife. At the time shoes were generally expensive and even though his were of good quality, customers often complained about the price they had to pay. This gave him the idea to produce lower quality shoes at low prices for the masses. Success was immediate and soon afterwards, Sears opened a small factory and then a larger one. The True-Form Boot Company, with its factory and network of own shops was born. Within a few years Jack Sears accumulated a fortune large enough to purchase Collingtree Grange, an impressive country house just outside Northampton. He died in 1916 at the age of 46, leaving his wife Caroline with the majority of shares in John Sears & Co. (True-Form Boot Co. Ltd). The company continued to expand and in 1927 it bought Freeman, Hardy & Willis and its 551 outlets to become the largest shoe retailer in Britain.
By the time of Caroline Sears's death in 1952, J. Sears & Co. controlled around 900 outlets, mostly through F, H & W. Caroline had remained the major shareholder in the company but the family and the board hadn't planned for her death. More specifically they hadn't made any provision to avoid the very high death duties that existed at the time. In order to pay the duties on Caroline's estate, her son Stanley (the father of racing driver 'Gentleman' Jack Sears) was forced to sell his family's shares in the company.
The news of Caroline's death and Stanley's financial problems sent the value of the shares down on the London stock market. This paved the way for Charles Clore to gain control of the company. Clore, the son of a clothing manufacturer from the East End, had made a fortune during the Second World War by investing in properties. He acquired them at low prices and after the war made money by selling the leasehold and buying back a long lease. By 1948 he had made enough money to be able to purchase several companies before stripping them of their valuable assets. These included Furness Shipbuilding in 1951 and Bentley Engineering in 1952. The same year he was made aware by an estate agent that the value of J. Sears & Co. on the stock market was much lower than its true worth. Through Investment Registry Ltd, of which he was director, Clore made a successful bid for the company in 1953, and immediately sold its properties to insurance and other leasing companies before buying the lease back. In the process Clore pocketed £4 million.
Following this take over, Charles Clore had Sears buy Furness and Bentley from him, netting an appreciable £11.760 million, and in 1955 brought all these companies together into Sears Holding Ltd, a company with no link to the Sears family whatsoever. In 1962 Clore reorganized his footwear interests into the British Shoe Corporation. All these shops and brands, except Dolcis, were sold in 1996 to Stylo plc, which decided to consolidate them into its Barratts and PriceLess Shoes brands. Therefore many familiar footwear names, including True-Form, were axed. As for Sears Holdings, it was acquired in 1999 by Philip Green's Arcadia Group.

J. Sears & Co.
True-Form [*]
Boot Co.
Ladies [*]
Gents & [*]
Childrens [*]
Footwear [*]
*: indicates parts painted twice, originally in red.

Until early 2009 part of this sign was hidden behind a modern billboard. The shop next door still obscures the last line, which can only be seen by standing next to the wall.

March 2012 update: this ghost sign is now once more hidden behind a billboard. See here.

Location: The Broadway / Picture taken in February 2009

Benson & Hedges, South Wimbledon

Following Brian Duffy's death on 31st May, BBC4 broadcasted on Saturday night "The Man Who Shot the 60s", originally shown earlier this year. If you missed this tribute to one of the iconic photographers of the 60s and 70s, you can still watch it on BBC iPlayer over the next six days.
After working for some of the most influential fashion magazines, Duffy ventured into advertising, something he didn't particularly enjoy. As he put it himself, by the 70s, "99.9% of what I was shooting then was advertising – crap. The people who were hiring me, I didn't like. It was like being on the game and disliking the men who are fucking you..." Still Duffy shot some amazing pictures, especially for Collett Dickenson Pearce's Benson and Hedges 'Pure Gold' campaign launched in 1977. The surreal images of this award-winning campaign certainly captured people's imagination far more than the posters, TV ads (until 1965), or painted signs that had been promoting 'Pure Gold' cigarettes since 1962.

Benson
and
Hedges
Pure Gold
Even if this sign at the end of a row of closed-down shops has been painted over, with a double or triple coat on the lettering, it is still possible to read what was written when the sun is at a right angle (and with a bit of work with Photoshop).
The whiter patch on the left masks what looks like an old logo of "B&H". The letters are much more curvy and fluid. Very similar to those my school teacher drew on the blackboard when she showed us how to write capital letters. The patch on the right may hide a similar logo but I am not sure.

Location: Merton High Street / Picture taken on: 14/03/2008

Cars, Trucks; Wimbledon

While some old painted signs have been relatively well preserved and are easy to read, deciphering others can be a bit of a challenge. Then again, sorting out the jumble to reveal what was written is generally fun (although it can also be slightly frustrating sometimes).
In the case of the wall below, although it is possible to distinguish three different layers, some parts are either too intermingled or faded to be able to read them.


The oldest product advertised, written in lower case and italic was hard to identify. It looked like Fors... [not sure about the 's' though]
This is because it was covered by the most recent layer, which read To Let
Apply W... W...
Finally the second sign promoting the services of the local garage read:

Cars, Trucks		Trac... [Tractors?] Repairs
		Service Depot

A few more letters could be identified here and there in the lower part, including some making what looked like Londonpainted in white (thus maybe part of the most recent sign), but the rest didn't make much sense...

Unfortunately the wall on which these signs were painted was demolished a few weeks after I too my picture, so no need to jump on your cameras and rush to Wimbledon. All you'll see now is an undistinct small building stuck between the road and the tramway tracks.

Location: Hartfield Road / Picture taken on: 14/03/2008

Freeman, Hardy & Willis, Littlehampton and Wimbledon

Two weeks ago I was searching on my computer for a mosaic I could post on this blog, when I realized that I had two pictures, from Wimbledon and Littlehampton, with the same initials. The design was different but both displayed "FH & W." Surely this wasn't coincidence and I thought there could be more than just a local shop behind these initials. An internet search with just these three letters led to nothing. Then one day, on my way to do some shopping in Wimbledon I stopped at the local library to look at old pictures of Arthur Road, but the only ones they had didn't show its lower part. Still stuck! Then last week I passed through Peckham, and after taking a few pictures of the area, including some painted signs, headed towards the library. While looking for some information to legend my photos I came across an old picture of a high street with a Freeman, Hardy & Willis shoe shop! With a full name, it would now be easier to find some information about that chain and see if it was connected with the two mosaics. And indeeed, these mosaics were laid at the entrances of two branches of this once popular chain of footwear retailers, which disappeared in 1996, the very year I came to Britain. Maybe if I had asked the granny next door, my mystery would have been solved earlier...

Freeman, Hardy & Willis was set up in Leicester in the mid 1870s, when Edward Wood sold his boot and shoe manufacturing business, E. Wood & Co., to three of his associates (for more on footwear manufacture in Leicester, click here). Soon after the company changed its name, and Freeman, Hardy & Willis embarked on an ambitious expansion plan which saw its number of retail outlets increase dramatically. Actually, FH & W was one of the first firms, which in the last quarter of the 19th century, opened shops in many towns, thus selling directly to the public and cutting the middleman. By 1890 it owned more than 100 outlets (other companies with such high number of branches included the International Tea Company, the Home and Colonial Tea Company, Eastman's the butchers, and footwear retailers Stead & Simpson and George Oliver). By 1914 the number had increased to nearly 500. The opening of new outlets across the country explains only partially such an expansion. The increase in size of Freeman, Hardy & Willis (and of most other companies at the time, with the exception of W. H. Smith and Boots) was mainly the outcome of amalgations with competitors. At the turn of the century, Freeman, Hardy & Willis took control of Rabbits & Sons and Pocock Brothers. In 1927 though, FH & W and its 551 outlets were acquired by its competitor Sears, which traded under the name True Form. In 1953 after a sensational take-over, Charles Clore took control of Sears, and three years later added Manfield and Dolcis to his portfolio. Clore reorganized his footwear interests into the British Shoe Corporation in 1962 and the same year went on to buy Saxone, and Lilley & Skinners. In 1996 Sears' shoe shops, except Dolcis, were sold to Stylo plc, which decided to consolidate them into its Barratts and PriceLess Shoes brands. Therefore many of those familiar footwear name were axed.

As mentioned above, the two mosaics have different designs. While the one in Littlehampton appears at first sight more elaborate, it is actually quite crude. The letters are not even aligned with the pavement and, in any case, would have looked better if they had adopted the curve of the parchment. The one in Wimbledon on the contrary looks apparently more simple. Yet there is a nice gradation in the letters, from brown to red and grey and the three-tone fan background is quite attractive.

Location: High Street / Picture taken on: 11/04/2009

Location: Arthur Road / Picture taken on: 03/09/2008

Now that I know that Freeman, Hardy & Willis were present in most towns and cities across Britain, I'm hoping that I'll come across some more mosaics, or even a painted sign for them... Who knows?