Pictures from Porto ………… and a bit of street furniture from around the corner

Or as we often say in our house … “a wall of sardines, date stamped, and a bit of street furniture brought to you by Fucoli-Somepal”.

A wall of sardines, 2025

Now I have no idea sitting here in Chorlton as to why these tins of sardines each bear a different date, other than you can search for the year you were born and take home the contents ready to eat on the anniversary of your birth.

And that was the assumption of my pal who sent over the image on his trip through the Portuguese town of Porto.

SANEAMENTO, 2025

That said there will be someone who has taken a similar picture and has the knowledge of just why a company would date stamp their tins of sardines.

Happily, I am more at home with the metal street cover which bears the words SANEAMENTO which is Portuguese for sanitation, and underneath it Fucoli which is the company that makes such essential street items.

Their web site announces that “At Fucoli-Somepal, we pride ourselves on providing durable and long-lasting ductile iron products for wastewater applications. Our expertly engineered solutions are designed to perform exceptionally well, even in the most challenging conditions”.  Added to which their products are “100% made in Europe”.*

This Porto “ductile iron product” is a grand addition to my collection of street furniture which extends way beyond street covers to include stink poles, vending machines, and ghost signs, as well as redundant telephone kiosks, Lucy Boxes, and streetlamp posts.

The list is endless, and pretty much covers anything which at some point in time has occupied a street corner, plastered on a wall, stood on a pavement or the middle of a road or just outside a shop.**

A Lucy Box, 2021

Once they did the business but progress has reduced them to rusting, neglected and forgotten bits of our history.

Like those Lucy Boxes which according to my I Spy Lucy Boxes, site, a "Lucy box" is a name applied to boxes, about 3 feet high, about 2 feet wide and about 18 inches deep, which are to be found on pavements throughout the city.   

Such boxes were originally used in connection with the tram network and then with the trolley bus network; and as part of the general electricity supply network; and for telephone purposes”.***

To these I could add horse troughs and finger posts.  

For those who like me who were born in the first half of the last century, the horse trough were a common sight still fulfilling their purpose of offering drinking water to thirsty horses which pulled the milk floats and assorted carts and wagons. While finger posts with their destination indicators pointing in different directions remain far more attractive than those giant metal signs in day glow colours. 

And looking at this vending machine from the middle decades of the 20th century it is hard to remember that there was a time when you could get cigarettes, chocolate, chewing gum and even milk and orange juice from a machine which required to to do no more than put your money in a slot and pull the right lever.

No complicated battery of buttons to assist in making a choice between a bewildering selection and which requires a card rather than a few coins.

But then as now there was always that danger that the machine refused to give you anything ..... reminding me of that old sad lament ...."here I stand, paid a penny and only ......".

All of which is a long way from Porto in Portugal and so given that we have shifted in time and space, I shall close with this wonderful sign from the age of the old Manchester trams.

It is undated but I think will come from the 1930s or 40s.

Tram sign, undated

And I wonder if it will have a longer life than the sign to the lavatories in a department store in Manchester I collected yesterday.

2025

Well we shall see.

Location; on any street, shop wall at anytime in the last two centuries.

Pictures; wall dated stamped sardines, and a bit of street furniture brought to you by Fucoli-Somepal, 2025, A Hardy & Padmore of Worcester Lucy Box, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertso the forgotten machine in Deal, 2016, courtesy of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick, Manchester Corporation Tramways, date unknown, from the collection of Allan Brown

* Fucoli-Somepal, https://www.fucoli-somepal.pt/EN/produtos/produtos/agua-residuais-saneamento#

**Street furniture, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Street%20furniture 

*** I Spy Lucy Boxes , http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/articles/lucy/lucyboxes.htm