Cullingham
Road 'Corn hay chaff...'
This
building has been demolished, it's now on our These We Have Lost page. See
photographs below.
2001 image
This one's
a peach. A large ghost of a sign, it is on
the side wall of
the
HSS Hire Shop on the corner of Cullingham Road where it meets Handford
Road.
You can see part of the metal street sign to the lower right and near
it,
partially covering our sign, the modern shop sign screwed to the wall.
So
what does it say, we hear you cry? Well, it took a bit of deciphering,
even
on site, but the long pale cartouche reads:
'CORN
HAY CHAFF AND STRAW
STORES'
(there may
be other lettering beneath). The wall of
this building is a
patchwork
of rebuilding and blocking-up (particularly noticeable above the
decorative
frieze) and in fact it stands on one of the ancient roads into the
town,
running in a south westerly direction from Colchester towards the site
of
the long-lost Ipswich Castle near Civic Drive; this area was once very
marshy
and largely uninhabited. It's nice to think that the sign reached that
far
back, but unlikely. It does, however, link us to an age when the horse
ruled
the highways and chandlers advertised the products of the corn harvest
for
the steeds' upkeep and well-being.
2010 image courtesy
Dave
Riseborough
[Update 3.1.2010.
Dave Riseborough's more recent photograph shows a new street sign (with
Borough crest) and a change to the temporary, screwed-on sign: it's now
an estate agent's board. Even on this 'full frontal' image (close-up
below) it is difficult to make out any words, within the pale
cartouche outline. However, straining the eyes and walking up and down
in front of the site did eventually reveal the sign, as laid out above.
Dave writes: "Hullo Borin, I found the Cullingham Road sign on your
website after I sent you the e-mail – you've got better eyesight than
me to decipher it."]
[UPDATE 18.4.2016: The
Ipswich Society Facebook page announces that this building is due for
demolition. "The end of 139 London Road.... This familiar building next
to LIDL on the corner of Cullingham Road and Handford Road has become
an eyesore in recent years and has been empty and boarded up since
December last year. The building is due to be demolished in the next
few weeks to create a larger car park for the ever busier LIDL store
which was enlarged two years ago. The Ipswich Arms and the Royal
William pubs used to stand side by side to the right of this building
until they were demolished in 2000 to build the new LIDL store."]
2016 images
By 2016 part of the sign has been obliterated by cream
paint running round from the frontage. Here is a close-up of the
right-hand side of the sign, showing some slightly raised elements and
a clearly defined small capital 'S' just right of centre, illustrating
the layers of lettering. Once you've got your eye in, you can make out
the word 'Stores' (the final 's' cut off) to the right and 'Straw to
the left.
Below: the view of the whole site down Cullingham Road showing
outbuildings.
[UPDATE: 16.2.2017:
'This Historic Lettering bit the dust today and the whole building will
probably be gone by the end of next week. I will try and get
better photos tomorrow morning without the sun in front of the
camera... I am attaching four photos of the old HSS HIRE
yesterday. I guess it will all be gone by the end of this week at
they rate they are working Tim Leggett'. Our thanks to Tim... so this example joins
our These
we have lost page.]
Photographs
courtesy Tim Leggett
Cross over Handford Road and go down to the nearby
junction with London Road for Mile End -
Coleman Buildings.
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