After a lovely afternoon on the first walking tour which celebrated my book Fading Ads of London I’m running another walking tour event on Saturday 14th June.

The tour will start outside Old Street Tube Station at Midday and will last approximately two hours. We will finish up at Mornington Crescent tube station. When you get to the tube station look out for a blonde lady with a green clipboard (ruling out any ridiculous coincidence that will be me).

It is a walking tour so please wear comfortable shoes and be prepared for my endless enthusiasm and random facts about hand-painted signs from a quaint but fascinating era.

Once bought tickets are non-refundable but can be transferred to a future walking tour as required.

Click here to book your place now!

Places are very limited to keep the group size manageable so please book soon to avoid disappointment.

Once bought tickets are non-refundable but the price can be transferred against the cost of a future walking tour as required.

Today I did a dummy walk of my ghost signs tour. I’m running it to celebrate the release of my book: Fading Ads of London and the constant architectural flux in London means I had to check all the signs were still in place. I’m pleased to report that they are. Whilst doing my check I photographed some of the other architectural highlights that walkers will see on the tour.  Street art, art deco architecture. canals and old warehouses will all feature. Places are limited but there are still a couple of spots left if you’d like to join us and enjoy some of the fading adverts about London.

Click here to grab one of the last few spots

To celebrate the launch of my book on Fading Ads of London I’m running a special walking tour event on Saturday 17th May. For the price of a pack of Black Cat Cigarettes you can come along!

According to the remaining ghost signs of London, you could once get 10 Black Cat Cigarettes for 6d. Yahoo Answers reliably (?) tells me that, taking into account the rise in earnings, this equates to £2.50 in terms of modern-day spending power. Consequently that’s the special price for this introductory tour.

The tour will start at Camden Town Tube Station at Midday and will last approximately two hours. When you get to the tube station look out for a blonde lady with a red clipboard (ruling out any ridiculous coincidence that will be me). It is a walking tour so please wear comfortable shoes and be prepared for my endless enthusiasm and random facts about hand-painted signs from a quaint but fascinating era.

Click here to book your place now!

Places are very limited to keep the group size manageable so please book soon to avoid disappointment.

Once bought tickets are non-refundable but the price can be transferred against the cost of a future walking tour as required.

My lovely publisher, The History Press, sent me an advance copy of my book this week. Working with them has been an incredibly positive experience; they clearly really care about the projects they take on and (as is probably evident from the photo below) I was really impressed with the final design of my book. The volume isn’t available until May but it can be pre-ordered today from Amazon, Waterstones and The Guardian Bookshop.

Although my next book is about London ghost signs I seem to be developing some kind of spider sense when I go anywhere else, as I stumbled across a range of ghost signs today in Middlesbrough. This one was by far my favourite and definitely deserves a post of its own. It’s in remarkably good condition.

This ghost sign seems a little confused about its true self

I had a couple of hours in Leeds the other week and found this ghost sign on the end of a row of houses I used to live on. Little did I know back then that I would one day be a full blown ghost signs anorak and wind up writing a book about them.

This is by no means an extensive catalogue of all the Leeds ghost signs as I only had a couple of hours but it offers a taste of the gems written across the walls in West Yorkshire.

Electric Press Ghost Sign, Leeds.

After the success of my first non-fiction book: True Love is Like the Loch Ness Monster, I decided that for my next project I wanted a different challenge. As many of you know I am very interested in the history and architecture of cities and in December I was commissioned by The History Press to create a book on Fading Ads of London. The book will primarily serve as a photographic tour of London’s ghost signs but will also offer insight into the history of the brands and the signage itself. 

As suggested by the photograph taken in Leeds above, fading adverts and signs can be found all over the UK, in fact they can be found all over the world. I have previously posted some of my own findings on this blog to offer a flavour of the intricate design and typographical precision that once went into hand-painted brick signs. London is extremely rich in these old signs, so not every single example will be included. Instead I’ll be selecting the most striking exhibits for inclusion, steering readers to the most visually and historically poignant signs.

One of the most exciting elements of this project is that a lot of my own photography will be published in the book – approximately 150 shots –  which is a new avenue for me in print. I will be working on this book for the majority of 2013 and it is likely to be available mid-2014. Wish me luck.

My weekend travels took me to Stoke Newington and as yet I don’t think I’ve found any part of London that’s as rich in ghost signage. Most ghost signage in London that we can still see today dates from the end of the 19th century to the early twentieth century, with this in mind it’s no great surprise that Stoke Newington boasts so many beautiful examples of faded signs. During the early 20th century Stoke Newington stopped being a village in its own right and grew to be an expansion of London. This drew a great deal of new commerce to the area and naturally they would want to advertise their wares. The photos below are some of my favourite snaps.