When a ghost sign might just not be what it seems ......... out in Bridlington on a sunny day in September

Now here is a detective story and this one will have the lot.

It started with a holiday in Bridlington where Ron spotted and recorded two ghost signs which are the names and adverts for long gone companies and businesses.

In an age before the television commercial and way before the internet having your name and products painted on the side of a gable end was the cutting edge in advertising.

Many survived the passing of the company and its products and can still be seen although most are fading or in the case of these two have been partly obscured.

What I like about the first is that even given that the original is only just visible in places the tradition of using the side of a building has not gone out of fashion in Bridlington, because CHAMBERS, Auctioneers, Estate Agents, Valuers and Surveyors whose advert now covers the wall with their advert are still in business.

They operated from this very building which carries their painted sign from when they opened their doors in 1919 till 2014, so it is entirely possible that the faded lettering underneath the bold blue paint may be one of their earlier adverts.

Ron tells me that the best vantage point to see the sign is from Station Approach which runs up from Bridlington Railway Station to Quay Road which makes total sense.

For almost a century anyone coming up that road would catch the sign and know who to call on first if they had need of an estate agent.

Today they trade from just over the road while their old premises in the “The Community Cop Shop” sandwiched between a hairdressers and the delightfully named Flamborough Fish.

Sadly I have been less successful with Ron’s other sign which is in on the side of Needlers on the Promenade where it joins York Road.

The lettering is faded and partially hidden by an advert for the TSB, but just possibly someone with local knowledge will be able to help and maybe also suggest what stood on the actual corner which is now a car park, because if it were a building then it would have pretty much obscured our sign.

So either the sign pre dates that building or was made after it became a car park and that is where I shall leave the story.

Pictures, Bridlington 2015 from the collection of Ron Stubley

*CHAMBERS, CHARTERED SURVEYORS
AUCTIONEERS, ESTATE AGENTS COMMERCIAL and INDUSTRIAL VALUERS,
http://www.chamberssurveyors.co.uk/