Walking through Digbeth on Friday afternoon shooting some TTV I spot a ghost sign on the corner of Moseley St and Birchall St.
It’s not a big one and not that high up and while I don’t walk up that way very often I’m sure most people would miss it. I think it says The Midland Flour Co but I can’t find any reference on Google for such a company. I guess there’d be something in the local history records.
Anyway, ghost signs are interesting. There’s Ghostsigns.co.uk, a “collaborative national effort to photograph, research and archive the remaining examples of hand painted wall advertising in the UK and Ireland” which has a Flickr group powering their archive. Simply add your photos to that group and they’re put into the pot for indexing and researching. Top stuff.
There’s also another Flickr group which is international and has over 12,000 photos in it. Not much discussion though. And, of course, there’s the Flickr-powered interestingness search if you want the popular stuff.
Got me wondering if anyone’s collecting ghost signs in Birmingham and a filter of the Ghostsigns pool brought up 73 photos, most of which are the Melox Marvels sign on Milk St (which isn’t really a ghost). Which is a start, I suppose. There must be more though.
Can’t actually remember much about it – was probably taking pictures – but it this was a stop on the East Stride walk so Ben Waddington would know about this.
I don’t really have a date for it, layout looks 30s – 40s. I think I was talking more about bricks! There’s a nice Wm Morris brick on the other side of the road from here. Milk St Melox Marvels was restored about ten years ago from a bad state – still looks pretty good. I’ve got a few other Digbeth signs photos from researching the Digbeth Type Map a couple of years ago.
You could look up the address in the trade directories in the local history bit of the library – might give you some info. Love Marv.