Off licences
Off licences, the traditional 'corner shops' which
served the local community
with groceries and sold alcohol as a side-line, have reflected the
dominanace
of a local brewer and distributor in the town. Just as in Southwold,
where
the dominant force is Adnams, so Ipswich has been until recently
dominated by Tolly Cobbold.
The Cliff Quay Brewery has had a chequered history and was still
brewing
in a limited way (also offering brewery museum tours) until 2002. Tolly
themselves had a poor reputation in the fifties and sixties and during
the
clearances of impoverished housing in the town - notably around Civic
Drive
- many parlour-type ale-houses were demolished. Some say this was no
loss to the
town...
Certain corner shops and pubs still carry the Tolly
stamp.
'SUFFOLK
RD
STORES
TOLLY COBBOLD
ALES'
(above in 2001) in brown lettering and
rectangular
border against white faces Tuddenham Avenue; its counterpart cartouche
facing
Suffolk
Road features:
'TOLLY
COBBOLD
ALES'
The all over
whitening
of the brickwork and distinct pointing encourages the eye to believe
that this is a wall sign
in ceramic tiling. The host of hand-painted and home-made signs below
only highlight the formality of the Tolly signs above.
Above is a lost piece of Tolly lettering which someone
has sought to obliterate
with whitewash (now washing down the wall).
'PROSPECT
HOUSE
TOLLY
COBBOLD
ALES'
executed long before the drainage pipe at top left was
installed,
was clearly a rear advertisement for a long-disappeared grocer at the
corner
of Cemetery Road, fronting Christchurch Street. The dark capitals could
have been placed on a white rectangle, then overpainted in pale blue,
or
it might have been that the colours were the other way around. Tolly
Cobbold lettering remains intact (albeit often painted the same colour
as the surrounding brickwork) on The Emperor
in Norwich Road, the Ferry Boat Inn in Old Felixstowe,
the Rampant Horse and a former pub in Needham
Market, The
Globe and the Ferry Boat Inn in
Old Felixstowe.
The letterer's art is nowhere so well demonstrated as in the
example
of the former off licence at the corner of Bramford Road and Surbiton
Road.
Once Peatling and Cawdron, later (at the time the image below was
taken, 2001) Victoria Wine, this business in 2010 was a grocery
corner-shop.
The whole shaping of brickwork, roof and moulded frame
seem to have been
designed for the lettering high above the street level:
'WINES,
BOTTLED
ALES AND STOUT'
A tricky navigation of the apex of the upper triangle
by
the word 'Wines', having the 'N' as its fulcrum (the word followed by a
large comma), is shadowed by the centralised curving word 'Bottled'
above
a delightful 'And' featuring long elliptical tales from the 'N'. All
the
lettering is well looked-after and seems to have been regularly
retouched
in white and all has a blue-grey drop shadow. This is shown best in the
enhanced close-up.
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throughout the Ipswich
Historic Lettering site: Borin Van Loon
No reproduction of text or images without express written permission