Long-standing promotion: this ghost sign for E Reeve – now the House of Reeves – on the side of a house on Tanfield Road is at least 125 years old
KEN TOWL sets off to find as many ghost signs as he can
According to Historic England, ghost signs are “typically historic hand-painted advertising signs or old shop signs preserved on buildings that have since changed use”. They go on to suggest that these “faded relics can tell us much about our collective architectural, cultural and social history”.
Addiscombe ghost: the last vestiges of The Exchange can still just be made out on Lower Addiscombe Road
When a friend told me about a ghost sign just round the corner from me at 195 Lower Addiscombe Road, I thought it would be an opportunity to learn something about my neighbourhood.
You just can make out the words “The Exchange” above, at an angle, “Lower Addiscombe Road”.
Below that you can just about discern “POST OFFICE”.
The Lower Addiscombe Road Post Office today is at No311, inside the Co-op. I have only lived in the area since 2008 and it has always been there in that time.
I wonder if anyone remembers a Post Office at No195? Given the archaic style of the signage, it may have gone a long time ago.
My next stop was perhaps Croydon’s most well-known ghost sign, the Millets signage at the top of Surrey Street, on the outer wall of a building that has not housed Millets for some time.
Millets, the camping and outdoor wear store, was based on at the junction of Surrey Street and the High Street for almost a century. For so long, in fact that the place even became known as “Milletts’ Corner”. But they closed for business in April 2017, after 97 years.
Signs of change: after 97 years trading on the corner of Surrey Street and the High Street, Millet’s closed in 2017. The sign is at least 75 years old
Around the corner, on Croydon High Street, I contemplated the facade of Grants (d 1985) the once elegant department store, the “Harrods of south London”, as it was known, which was referred to by Labour’s mayoral candidate, Rowenna Davis, in her campaign launch speech as an example of one of the glories of a bygone Croydon age.
There are traces of this once grand emporium, not strictly ghost signs, but something akin to them. Moulded onto the stonework above the first-floor windows, you can see words that described the wares that would have been available to Croydon’s Victorian shoppers when the store opened in 1895: silks, dresses, lace, gloves, millinery and ribbons.
The windows themselves announce children’s showrooms, frocks and costumes, corsets and jackets.
After that, I had to consult the website ghostsigns.co.uk and its very helpful Greater London map. I caught the 407 bus in search of a sign that, according to the website, said “Bunce” and was down in Purley, at 947 Brighton Road. On the way, as the bus navigated the centre of Croydon, I got a view of another ghost-adjacent sign, the Nestlé sign at the top of the now near-derelict tower, which was vacated as their British head office by the Swiss-owned food giant in 2012.
Photographic memory: all that remains of a Purley photography studio
Someone has visited recently to daub the slogan “FREE GASA”. Presumably, it is hard to get your “Z” the right way round when you are leaning over a sheer drop of 260 feet.
In Purley, I found the “Bunce”. It was just that, the word “Bunce”, only about 10 inches high, black on white with a sort of 3D effect created with a judicious use of grey. A little bit of research established that between 1922 and 1929, 947 Brighton Road was the site of George and Herbert Bunce’s Photography Studio, making the remains of that sign 100 years old.
I then headed, on foot, down to Kenley Station, where, according to ghostsigns.co.uk, I would find a Courage and a Barclays sign.
I didn’t. They may have been painted over, or I may just not have been very observant.
What I did see in Kenley was the Kenley Hotel at 62 Godstone Road, so I suppose that the painted sign on the door of the “Public Bar” counts as a ghost sign, given that this is a pub that has not hosted the public for a while.
Generation Z: it must be tricky to check your spelling from 260 feet up
It would be good to see it open, but things do not seem to be going well for the pub trade in Croydon. According to the CAMRA website, the pub is “temporarily closed” and is “expected to reopen on or before 01/10/2025. Closed until a new licensee can be found.” Have they found a licensee? Or will it go the way of other local pubs, closed never to reopen, at least not as a pub?
Given the perennial narrative in Croydon that the town has seen better days, every one of these signs is a poignant reminder of a past that we have lost. Whether it was better or not is another question. After all, Addiscombe still has a Post Office and beer is better than it ever was. No drinker would settle for Watneys Red Barrel these days.
But if anyone knows where I can find a faded relic of a Watneys Red Barrel sign, please let me know.
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