As a former typographer, my eye is always out for well-done signs and inscriptions. I love the quirky and funny ones, too, but my favorites are the carefully, if unusually done ones that are meant to impress.
Here’s a gallery collected in three-plus weeks of wandering in England last spring; if you’d like to see more, there are two previous sets on TravelGumbo, HERE
Here’s one that tells you what’s no longer there…
Others announce the building they’re on…
And there are some that inform us of the area’s past in grand form
Some merely date themselves…
Although occasionally with a royal flair…
Even the mundane occasionally indulges in a nice announcement…
And even the charitable effort is occasionally dressed to kill…
Glass can be a nice touch…we can’t all be carved or painted. The upper one is in Lyme Regis, over a tiny theatre; the smaller sign is for the very large Victoria Palace theatre in London.
Time for a little more history with these two from Canterbury…
And a little travel history, with these two displays at Waterloo for the London and Southwestern Railway Co. and a former ticket window at Edgeware Road on the Underground.
And two unusual favorites for the end, because they honor not just the past or the high-and-mighty but the ordinary people who make everything go…
First photo. The London and South Western Railway (LSWR) was a railway company in England from 1838.
All history is there – if you look up at old buildings !
Great piece! Love the attention to the detail these artisans had.