It will be pretty much 60 years since I last walked down Avingnon Road, and even then it will have been just one of the many random adventures you do as a kid.
I am guessing that after playing in Pepys Park we set off in the general direction of Nunhead, with no particular plan fired by curiosity and the fact we never really strayed far from Lausanne Road where I spent my early years.
And what set off these memories was Paula’s picture of the ghost sign on the corner building.
Now ghost signs are all that is left of a product or business which once advertised by having their names and products painted on the walls of buildings.
So, this one attracted me, if for no other reason than I liked Hovis.
But the sign is false, dating only from sometime between April 2015 and May 2016, and was originally for Daren Bread, the ad reading “A Taste for Daren Bread”.
Which of course set me researching Daren Bread which was a household name in the 1890s through into the next century, and the answers came from a delightful site on London Walking Tours.*
It was produced from flour ground at the Daren Mill in Dartford Kent.
The Mill went bankrupt in the 1930s and Daren Bread was merged into the Hovis brand and phased out.
So, the new sign sort of makes sense, but ghost sign sadly it ain’t.
However, for those of an inquiring mind, the original can be found on street google from 2008 till that change roughly four years later.
I will have clocked the old sign, but I doubt it would have registered.
Location; Nunhead
Picture; the Hovis sign, 2021, from the collection of Paula Griffin
*DAREN BREAD - THE GIFT OF GIFTS, London Walking Tours, https://www.london-walking-tours.co.uk/secret-london/daren-bread.htm
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