I lived, for a haunting spell, in an 18th-century house painted from top-to-toe in adverts for "Donovan Bros, the noted house for paper bags". The house, in London's Spitalfields, is green now, yet retains its loud frontage – a favourite for tourists combing the recently restored streets, of what had been a distinctly Dickensian quarter of central London – for soot-encrusted decades.
When Dickens was in his novel stride, British towns and cities boasted a promiscuous palette of painted adverts like these. Standing on the tops of ladders, signwriters had a field day celebrating Bovril, Hovis, Boots and Nestle's Milk "Rich in Cream", along with Puck Matches, Bile Beans, Peterkin's Custard and any number of local crafts, trades and services.
Many signs survive, in ghostly form, on the sides of ageing buildings. I bet there's one near you. Ruthless modern development means that such "ghost signs" (as they are known by the History of Advertising Trust) are disappearing.
And yet they deserve to be saved. Here are urban folk-memories from an age before the triumph of the paste-up poster, cinema, magazine, telly and internet advertising. Through the History of Advertising Trust's online archive, ghostsigns.co.uk/archive, you can see some 600 examples, garnered from around the country. The Trust would ask you to "Take Courage", as the old painted beer ads said, stroll around your town's vanishing past, and add your own.
