Felixstowe Road /
Derby Road
Examples of
trade lettering can be found in and around
Felixstowe Road near
to the Royal Oak public house. This enigmatic set of lettering is
prominently
displayed on the side wall of the house at Felixstowe Road, on the
corner
of Salisbury Road. We decipher this as:
'J.W. HOW.
HOUSE
(word
obliterated)
[Salisbury Road streetsign]FOR SALE &(?)
TO LET. OFFICES(?)'.
The proprietor (whatever he did)
appears to have painted over earlier lettering as well as obliterating
some
with a brick-coloured paint.
-
Across Felixstowe Road and a bit further up towards The
Royal Oak, is the
Lloyds Pharmacy at number 159, resplendant with its vertical 'CHEMIST'
lettering
on the leading edge of the side wall. Although recently repainted,
these
letterforms look as though they've been in place for many years. The
centred
extended caps in shiny white against the black panel are very
eye-catching
and get across that jump from the 'M' to the 'S' with a slender 'I'
remarkably
effectively in this format. See also the examples 'H.W.
Turner' (and the Berners Street 'Hotel' on the same page).
As drivers queue at the traffic lights in nearby Derby Road (opposite
the
Royal Oak) they may have noticed on the back wall of 181 Felixstowe
Road
the words:
'H. PRENTICE
FAMILY GROCER.'
(complete with full stop). The
name
of the proprietor at the top has been obliterated but the paint has
weathered enough for the name to be (just) visible. This
particular
shop has changed hands a number of times since it was a corner shop
selling
groceries (remember them?) and, add insult to injury, the plot at the
rear
of the premises has been sold off. One of its more recent incarnations
was
a linguistic curiosity: the hair salon immortalised as "Rena's Canse".
Perhaps the proprietor was Rena and she wanted to proclaim herself as a
Renaissance Hairdresser?
A sign of the times is that this shop is currently a
tattoo parlour.
A modern house facing Derby Road now blocks the
eye-line of the advertisement
and 'Family Grocer.' remains as a fading reminder of a time before
out-of-town
supermarkets when the corner shop serving local shoppers was a mainstay
of the town's economy.
It's only short distance from here to Foxhall Road and Cauldwell Hall
Road.
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throughout the Ipswich
Historic Lettering site: Borin Van Loon
No reproduction of text or images without express written permission