Ghost signs on Evelina Road .............. along with an old telephone kiosk and much more

Now yesterday I was looking for water troughs and found my old one at the top of St Mary’s Road.

It’s gone now and I have no idea when it was hauled away and replaced by the big flower bed.

But the tall old iron ventilation shaft is still there like its partner on Lausanne Road which were built to vent gases from the sewers below.*

It features in front of the trough in Adrian Parfitt’s photograph of this corner of St Mary’s Road.

The picture is one he sent me a while ago and it’s not until now that I have really looked at it.

There was no date on the picture, but I know it will be after 1911 because at the time there were no buildings listed between Gibbon Road and Hollydale Road and if pushed it will have to be after 1920 when the Post Office began introducing the K1 telephone box to our streets.

The K1 was made of concrete and was replaced with the more familiar red K2 from 1926.

I suppose this one could have lingered on into the 1930s or even later which led me to the adverts on the side of what was the post office.

The detail is hard to make out and the product lost but the hair style of the woman places it in that period.

What fascinates me more is the painted sign above it and what is remarkable is that it is still there today.

Or at least a painted sign is still there although I can’t quite match the two up.

And for that I need a modern photograph of the shop and sign.

Looking at street google the present if now redundant sign seems to be advertising a chemist which had been established for 55 years.

I can’t think it will be the same as the earlier one but there’s the challenge.

So if anyone regularly walks past the spot or fancies a trip out I would welcome a new photograph which will help solve the mystery and present me with two ghost signs for the price of one shop.

Which just leaves me to add a comment from Adrian, "hi Andrew, I have just seen your item on the post office, I can remember it as a chemist named Kebbles and the post office was also in there.

Then the post office moved up into Gibbon Road, past the butchers shop, I can remember this back in the early 50's."

Picture; Evelina Road, circa 1920-26, supplied by Adrian Parfitt

*When a smelly sewer was just one too many, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/when-smelly-sewer-was-just-one-too-many.html