Famous for, perhaps, only one thing: being the
birthplace of one M.
Thatcher, Grantham has an enigmatic vertical strip of lettering. It
looks very much as if the building to the right of the image was built
over an existing painted tradesman's sign. The sign itself certainly
carries at least two generations of lettering, probably from the same
company(?). [Photographs courtesy:
Richard
Attenborrow]
The darker image to the left is closer to Richard
Attenborrow's
original photograph with an enhancement to the right. The upper strip
of white which runs behind the broken down-pipe may have carried the
company name in bold capitals. We can make out three variants of the
word 'Builder', plus another service provided by this company:
'BUILDE
BUI--
GLAZI(er?)
---RO(?)
BUI--'
'CAFE Upstairs'
2012. Here's a nice piece of painted brickwork; we
particularly approve of the trompe
l'oeil screw head at the top. It's from the old Co-op in Grantham, which is
now closed and has been there since at least the fifties, we're told.
Thanks to Richard Attenborrow for the image.
'THE
WVS
REFRESHMENT
ROOMS'
Richard spotted this sign on Finkin
Street, Grantham and it is presumably left over from the war. The
red-brown arrow has stencilled white lettering on it and has either
weathered over eighty years, or had another colour sprayed on top to
partially obscure it. The location is behind the charity shop on the
corner with the B1174 and points towards the doorway of number 15
Finkin Street (or beyond). A second, black arrow of a similar shape is
found to the upper right, behind the street sign. Incidentally, there
is only one street named Finkin Street making it unique in Great
Britain.
The W.V.S. does indeed date back to World War II.
The Royal Voluntary Service (known as the Women's Voluntary Services
(WVS) from 1938 to 1966; Women's Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS) from
1966 to 2004 and WRVS from 2004 to 2013) is a voluntary organisation
concerned with helping people in need throughout England, Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1938 by Stella Isaacs,
Marchioness of Reading, as a British women's organisation to recruit
women into the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) services to help in the event
of War.
[Photographs courtesy:
Richard
Attenborrow]
