Now I like ghosts signs.
These were hand painted adverts which during the 19th and 20th centuries were on display on the sides of buildings.
Some by luck or neglect or good judgement have been preserved long after the shop owner, the company or the product have vanished and been forgotten. Most are now faded and difficult you see but a few are still around like the ones I posted.
Adverts have the power to take you back into the past. It is not just what they sell but often the assumptions that underlie them.
They take you back to a time when consumption delivered happiness, gender roles and expectations were clear and the future was always bright and confident.
Of course certain periods seem to echo this more than others.
If you grew up in the 50s you were part of that mounting belief that we had never had it so good, and that the grim years of depression war and hardships were things of the past.
Most of the time it isn’t obvious at first glance but at other times it can pull you up with a bump.
Who could now believe the tobacco adverts which confidently asserted in 1939 that that “Craven A Will not affect your throat” of that “after every meal” a certain brand of chewing gum “keeps you fit”?
Adverts also have a way of fixing a moment in time and open up other clues as to how we lived and what was going when they were designed and put up. A.E. Landers captured these images in the spring and summer of 1960.
The advertising hoardings ran along Wilbraham Road, in front of the railway. The smaller collection had stood close to the corner with Buckingham Road while the larger group were on the Chorlton side of the bridge.
The catalogue in the digital archives gives the date of both collections as 1960 but it is possible to be more specific.
The smaller collection were posted just before Easter because one of the four advertises the Bell Vue Easter Parade, while the larger group lists thr forthcoming films at the Essoldo on Barlow Moor Road for the June of 1960.
So in the spring and early summer of 1960 people in Chorlton had a choice of entertainment.
And there was also music at the Halle and a Festival of Magic at the Library Theatre.
But my eye was caught by the Ice Palace on Derby Road off Cheetham Hill Road in Strangeways.
Now I know the place but sadly not as a place of fun. Today it houses a collection of small businesses and is sprouting wild plants from its once elegant facade. But something of its former glory is still there.
“The Manchester Ice Palace was opened in 1910 and was once the finest ice skating rink in the world, the biggest in the UK and twice largest in Europe, and home to the Manchester Ice Hockey Club. 14000 square feet of ice was provided by an ice plant across the road and 2000 seats held Edwardian spectators at the National Ice Skating Championships and the 1922 World Championships.
The rink was later put to more prosaic use, holding munitions practice during the war before closing in the 1960s and becoming a bottling plant for Lancashire Dairies.”*
Older friends have vivid memories of the place, and back in the 1930s it was one of these places to go.
Now ice skating has never had much appeal for me so I guess I would have settled for the films at the Essoldo.
Sign of the Gladiator was one of those “sword and sandal” films which came out of Italy in the late 1950s and early 60s.
It was made with an international cast in 1959 and a fairly predictable plot which nevertheless made it slightly more appealing than Fabian The Hound Dog Man, also made in 1959.
It was a vehicle for the American teen idol Fabian and looking at clips and listening to the lead song I would rather have watched paint dry.
But back to the adverts. There is something quite delightful about them. They are familiar enough but just manage to pull you out of today.
It is there in the stylish clothes of the woman, the slightly dated dress of the ice skater and of course the iconic 60’s slogan “Drink a pinta milka day”. But for me it is the Express Freight poster which perfectly captures style of the period
Pictures; Wilbraham Road, A.E. Landers 1960, m18316 & Wilbraham Road, m18318, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
* Natalie Bradbury from her blog http://theshriekingviolets.blogspot.com/ and quoted from the post http://theshriekingviolets.blogspot.com/2009/10/manchesters-forgotten-palaces.html
These were hand painted adverts which during the 19th and 20th centuries were on display on the sides of buildings.
Some by luck or neglect or good judgement have been preserved long after the shop owner, the company or the product have vanished and been forgotten. Most are now faded and difficult you see but a few are still around like the ones I posted.
Adverts have the power to take you back into the past. It is not just what they sell but often the assumptions that underlie them.
They take you back to a time when consumption delivered happiness, gender roles and expectations were clear and the future was always bright and confident.
Of course certain periods seem to echo this more than others.
If you grew up in the 50s you were part of that mounting belief that we had never had it so good, and that the grim years of depression war and hardships were things of the past.
Most of the time it isn’t obvious at first glance but at other times it can pull you up with a bump.
Who could now believe the tobacco adverts which confidently asserted in 1939 that that “Craven A Will not affect your throat” of that “after every meal” a certain brand of chewing gum “keeps you fit”?
Adverts also have a way of fixing a moment in time and open up other clues as to how we lived and what was going when they were designed and put up. A.E. Landers captured these images in the spring and summer of 1960.
The catalogue in the digital archives gives the date of both collections as 1960 but it is possible to be more specific.
The smaller collection were posted just before Easter because one of the four advertises the Bell Vue Easter Parade, while the larger group lists thr forthcoming films at the Essoldo on Barlow Moor Road for the June of 1960.
So in the spring and early summer of 1960 people in Chorlton had a choice of entertainment.
And there was also music at the Halle and a Festival of Magic at the Library Theatre.
But my eye was caught by the Ice Palace on Derby Road off Cheetham Hill Road in Strangeways.
Now I know the place but sadly not as a place of fun. Today it houses a collection of small businesses and is sprouting wild plants from its once elegant facade. But something of its former glory is still there.
“The Manchester Ice Palace was opened in 1910 and was once the finest ice skating rink in the world, the biggest in the UK and twice largest in Europe, and home to the Manchester Ice Hockey Club. 14000 square feet of ice was provided by an ice plant across the road and 2000 seats held Edwardian spectators at the National Ice Skating Championships and the 1922 World Championships.
The rink was later put to more prosaic use, holding munitions practice during the war before closing in the 1960s and becoming a bottling plant for Lancashire Dairies.”*
Older friends have vivid memories of the place, and back in the 1930s it was one of these places to go.
Sign of the Gladiator was one of those “sword and sandal” films which came out of Italy in the late 1950s and early 60s.
It was made with an international cast in 1959 and a fairly predictable plot which nevertheless made it slightly more appealing than Fabian The Hound Dog Man, also made in 1959.
It was a vehicle for the American teen idol Fabian and looking at clips and listening to the lead song I would rather have watched paint dry.
But back to the adverts. There is something quite delightful about them. They are familiar enough but just manage to pull you out of today.
It is there in the stylish clothes of the woman, the slightly dated dress of the ice skater and of course the iconic 60’s slogan “Drink a pinta milka day”. But for me it is the Express Freight poster which perfectly captures style of the period
Pictures; Wilbraham Road, A.E. Landers 1960, m18316 & Wilbraham Road, m18318, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
* Natalie Bradbury from her blog http://theshriekingviolets.blogspot.com/ and quoted from the post http://theshriekingviolets.blogspot.com/2009/10/manchesters-forgotten-palaces.html
I beg to differ re the location of the smaller set of adverts, as a view of the corner of Wilb Rd & Buckingham Rd would show the filling station and the mature poplars running along Buckingham Rd, with the coal sidings hidden from view. These hoardings appear to be right on the edge of the goods yard, facing the station. Compare the street lamp with that seen on the 1960 photo of the goods office / weighbridge building at the other end of the station approach.
ReplyDeleteThank you mcw .... you maybe right
ReplyDelete