Have you ever noticed a small knobbly bit on the top of a post box and wondered why it's there? Well, here's the answer: it once held a double-sided sign which pointed towards the nearest post office, like this one in Lennoxtown on the outskirks of Glasgow. Most of these sign-holders have been damaged over the years, leaving just the central attachment point, and very few retain their original signs.
L’appli de photos a exhumé l’autre jour ce cliché pris il y a tout juste six ans (😢), montrant le somptueux #ghostsign soigneusement conservé de l’ancienne librairie Reedmor Books à Philadelphie. #passionbriques 🧱
... better link: George "McCallum’s brother John was the first to introduce the family department system to Glasgow pubs" https://oldglasgowpubs.com/the-big-glen
@bazzargh@Andy_European Yes, that does seem to be the origin of it, and there seems to be quite a few other similar ones on old pubs around Glasgow and beyond. 👍🙂
Ghost sign for the Royal Hospital for Sick Children on Old Dumbarton Road in Glasgow. The city's first dedicated children's hospital, it originally opened in 1882 in Garnethill. In 1914, it moved to new premises in Yorkhill in the West End of Glasgow where it remained until it was replaced by the new Royal Hospital for Children on Govan Road in 2015.
@thisismyglasgow there was also an interlude in the late 60s when the kids hospital had to be evacuated to Oakbank in Possil, after the discovery of structural problems in the building at Yorkhill.
I love coming across these old decorative thresholds bearing what are often the last traces of long-gone businesses. This one is at 10 Park Road in the West End of Glasgow. I don't know for certain, but it may relate to A. and L. Cameron, Drapers and Shirtmakers, who occupied this shop between 1902 and 1904.
Ghost sign over the back entrance to the former Woolworths store on the ground floor of Charing Cross Mansions in Glasgow. The main store front was at 22 to 26 Saint George's Road (where Tinderbox now is). Opened in 1922, this was the third Woolworths store in Glasgow (after ones on Union Street and Argyle Street, and the 121st Woolworths store overall. It closed in the 1970s.
@thisismyglasgow I think that back in the late 80's the place where Woolworths used to be was a grocery store run by an Asian family, although that might have been a unit a little closer to Sauchiehall St. They were very friendly and I always enjoyed going in there.
Threshold of the former James McFarlane Wholesale and Retail Ironmongers on Trongate in Glasgow. The business was founded by William Spence in 1844, and was purchesed by James McFarlane in 1886.
I found this fantastic little ghost sign today at the entrance to a tenement close on High Street in Glasgow. The tenement was built in 1901, but the phone number (Bell 976) indicates the sign dates from sometime between 1936, when the Bell Telephone Exchange opened on nearby Ingram Street, and the 1960s, when the Bell prefix was phased out in favour of the numerical ones 552 and 553.
@peterbrown Yes, I think the very last has-lit closes were finally upgraded in the early 1980s. There are supposedly still some closes in the East End which still have their gas light fittings in place.
I came across this ghost sign outside a tenement in Dennistoun yesterday, which got me wonder about who C. Gregory was. First, there's the initials after their name: A.R.C.O, which was an accreditation introduced by the Royal College of Organists in 1894 as a measure of professional competency. So far, this isn't anything more than others who have come across this sign before me have worked out.
However, then I decided to check the Glasgow Society of Organists, and in 1930/31 they had a president with the name T.C. Gregory. Yes, the initials are slightly different, but surely this can be no coincidence and the style of the font is certainly consistent with someone who was working as an organist in Glasgow around this time. So, did this sign once belong to the former president of the Glasgow Society of Organists? Well, it certainly seems likely!
Tout bleu le #ghostsign de l‘ancienne manufacture Lagache à Lille Moulins (fabrication de boîtes en métal, rebaptisée et remarketée depuis). #passionbriques 🧱
There's something rather satisfying about the fact that the word missing from this ghost sign under the Central Station Bridge in Glasgow is the word Missing!