Hello - thanks for visiting. I've not had much time to blog here recently. But I do post the occasional great sign on Instagram - find me there, where I'm sfoxez, or on twitter, @mandragoravixen. See you there!

Post script

We all love a secret, don't we? And the Postal Museum's secret railway is one of the best. Mail Rail runs underneath London's streets. It used to deliver mail, and now the 100 year old network delivers delights to museum visitors in its tiny trains. The museum has been nominated as Museum of the Year 2018, and it's only been open a few months - I guess the railway won't be secret much longer.

Some seem surprised that this museum has been such a success, but I'm just as surprised that they're surprised. People have an innate need to communicate, and the story of our postal service is fascinating. It's battled through attacks by highwaymen, bombs and even a lion (it's worth a visit to the museum for that story alone).

The secret railway sign is on the paving of a pretty garden area which includes a living wall studded with red post boxes. For fans of food, the cafe is worth a mention, as it's a notch better than the usual fare. So it's probably worth a visit now, while it's still (nearly) a secret. More info here.

Chicken or egg?

Which came first - the chicken or the egg? A sign of gamification of smoking, near a university somewhere in London (maybe Bloomsbury?). Neat idea. Discourages litter, encourages debate. And possibly also smoking. The chicken seems to be winning.

Bad housekeeping

Sign of opulence in South Kensington, London. All that money, yet they can't afford an apostrophe.

No standing in passages

Lovely old sign in the Argyll Arcade in Glasgow. Damp pedestrians must have caused severe blocking incidents for this sign to be erected. Argyll Arcade is one of the oldest in Europe. Built in 1827, it's a beautiful place, crammed with jewellers and diamond merchants. It was designed by John Baird, whose other work seems to have been more spiritual (churches and university buildings, for instance).  It's stunning, and worth a visit.

Briggs Stores ghost sign

Briggs Stores ghost sign, on the side of a house in Heaton Norris, Stockport, on the corner of Belmont Street and Clement Street. This photo was taken a few years ago. When we lived in Heaton Norris in the late 1980s/early 1990s, Belmont Street boasted some fabulous ghost signs, including a smart green and gold Hovis sign, and a chip shop with an interior straight out of the 1950s. It's all smartened up now, of course.

Self reflection

Lloyds Bank sign in Piccadilly, London, with the reflection of Wren's St James's in the window. A calm, cool picture which seems to hark back to the days when banks and churches were trusted pillars of society. In reality, Piccadilly is brash and bustling, the contrast between the haves and have nots is painful, something which St James's admirably strives to address.

Ring in the new year!

 
Happy New Year all! 2018.

Kindly leave

You heard. Elegant no-nonsense sign at Jedburgh Abbey.

Seize the day

Very appealing arty sign in Liverpool's fantastic Rococo coffee house, tucked away in Lord Street. A quote from Horace, urging us to seize the day - or, in this case, rather fab food, cake and coffee.

Captive audience

This cheery sign welcomes you to Dartmoor Prison Museum. Bleak and dark, even on a sunny day, Dartmoor prison is the major establishment of Princetown, high up on Dartmoor in Devon. It was built for French soldiers taken prisoner during the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800s. Bleak though it is, it must have been better than the cramped prison ships it replaced, which were anchored at nearby Plymouth and rife with disease. American prisoners started arriving in 1813 and Dartmoor soon became overcrowded. Outbreaks of typhoid, pneumonia and smallpox killed over 11,000 prisoners. Once the wars with France and America were over, Dartmoor prison was used for domestic convicts from 1850 and is still in use today. The prison museum is worth a visit - crammed full of history and detail. You get a friendly welcome, and some of the staff are prisoners helping out before they move to an open jail. The prisoners are no longer dangerous criminals working in chain gangs breaking stone on the harsh Dartmoor landscape; instead, they are low category prisoners who are encouraged to do training and learn skills to help them when they are released.

Model houses for families

An early example of social housing, with a sign proudly proclaiming its purpose. Built by the wonderfully named Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes, this handsome Bloomsbury building opened in 1850. It housed 48 families. Each dwelling had a living room, two bedrooms, a scullery and a water closet, and there were communal bathrooms and a laundry. It made a profit of about 5.5% for its investors. The Society's President was Queen Victoria's husband Albert. They had already experimented with a large development in Birkenhead, Wirral, which housed over 300 families; this had not been a success, as the buildings were too close together and the bedrooms too small. However, the London buildings were successful, and as well as homes for families, the society had lodgings elsewhere in London for single men and women. The society was taken over by the Peabody Trust in 1965.

When things were simple

Remember the simple days when you got your gas from the Gas Board, your electricity from the Electricity Board and your phone from the Post Office? Wait, what - the Post Office? It doesn't sound quite so obvious in these days of multiple providers, myriad models and a bewildering array of packages to pick from. I bet the phones supplied by the London Telephone Service were big, black and hung in the hall. I took this photo a couple of years ago and I can't remember where this handsomely lettered sign on a long blocked-up letter box is, though the geo info on my (not big, not black) phone says it's somewhere near Regents Park.

Everything is connected

Illuminated sign by artist Peter Liversidge, near Manchester's Piccadilly station.

Philosophical wall

"All greatness is precarious" (Plato, I think). Sign on a wall in Glasgow. Apt for the building it's on, which is beautiful but in need of attention.

No horse traffic please

Fine old sign surviving in a narrow passage in Jedburgh, Scotland. No horse traffic please.

In my good books

This gorgeous tiled welcome is in Duke Street, Liverpool. The sign on the handsome building tells us something of its history - it housed Liverpool's first public library. It was built around 1800 and was originally the Union Newsroom, becoming a library in 1852. It's now offices and they've kept the lovely tiles and the sign. 

China sign

I've been going through my vintage collection with the aim of selling it to create some space in the house. But I'm failing in the task and this week I managed to add to the collection instead. I couldn't resist buying another of these 1950s Manhattan plates. The mark on the back shows the inspiration for the pattern - skyscraper windows. Sometimes the sign on the back of a plate is as gorgeous as the pattern on the front.

Snacks from the past

Confections, snacks or cigarettes from the past, anyone? Trendy Edinburgh coffee shop the Milkman has kept its ghost sign, to great effect.

Saved

This is the fancy sign on the window of the Glasgow Savings Bank building. Built in the 1890s, it served as a bank until 1999, and has since made a handsome shop, currently occupied by Jigsaw.