Hales Chemist
While the more high profile chemist's shop lettering
from J.A.
Symonds in Upper Brook Street celebrates the early marketing of
Kodak
films, another similar business in 12 St Helens Street (opposite The
Regent)
has a much more fugitive, but equally appealing example of trade
lettering.
We noticed by chance that during the period between the shop's closure
and
its reopening as a bespoke tailor's, that the lettering 'HALES CHEMIST'
was picked out in a rather attractive ceramic mosaic on the front step.
Generations of visitors to the little shop must have stepped over this
lettering;
we wonder how many people noticed the name beneath their feet. Before
we
had a chance to photograph the step, the new owners covered it with
grey
paint. However, wear and tear are rapidly revealing the lettering;
here's
how it looked in March, 2004. [Repainted 2005, but lettering showing
through slowly! Update 2008: this shop is empty once again, so no feet
will wear away the painted surface for the time being.]
And here's a shot from the opposite side of the road.
Two cartouches:
the
one on the left painted on the wall, the one on the right a shaped
board
attached to the brickwork. Both bear the signs of obliteration of trade
lettering by coats of paint. To the left of the old chemist's shop we
find
'Turners Buildings' incised into a masonry strip above numbers 14 to 16
St Helens Street. The photograph (below right) taken in 2001 shows the
lettering
- clearer in the close-up - bisected by a metal road sign projecting
out
from the wall at right angles. The period photograph at bottom shows
that
this has existed for many years:
-
Here is the shop of R.W. Fox, bookseller and stationer,
in 1909. The
proprietor
stands proudly in the centre of grand displays of publications, news
hoardings
and gas lights. On the right is a glimpse of 'St Helens Drug Store'
(the
lettering on the shelf below the carboy in the window), so a chemist's
business
has existed on this site for about a century. The upper right of the
photograph
(which is enlarged below) shows the same 'Turners' lettering which
exists
today with the 'Buildings' part obscured by the projecting trader's
sign.
Somehow this simple example of a lost age of
shop-keeping sharpens the
sense
of loss when walking the streets of our town. This web page was created
in March 2004, when the announcement had just been made of the closure
in
June, 2004 of Martin & Newby's
long-standing
hardware, tools and electrical premises in Fore Street. We seem as a
consumer
society to be using our purchasing power to favour mobile telephone
shops,
charity shops and short-lived cheap-jack shops over 'proper shops'
which
sell things that everyone, presumably, has to buy. How many
greengrocers,
bakers, butchers, electrical and hardware shops have closed down in
recent
decades? Those fortress-like supermarkets and warehouse DIY shops on
the
outskirts of the town continue to take away volumes of trade and
destroy
individual service from a real person behind a counter. There are still
one or two old-style businesses in Ipswich such as Browne's Menswear
opposite
Sainsbury's in Upper Brook Street.
Another remnant of a chemist's shop exists on Fore Street, opposite Isaac Lord.
A few doors down from the former Hales shop is a tiny,
ancient building opposite the Regent Theatre.
Empty and in poor condition some years ago, it was refurbished and the
original internal beams exposed against white washed plasterwork walls.
It is now an internet cafe open for long hours. As we waited in a car
at the Majors Corner traffic lights one day we noticed a date in relief
numerals painted the same black as the surround on one of the upper
beams: '1636'.
-
The carved numerals visible in the enhanced close-up
below appear to be original, making this a building of some age; it
would be interesting to discover the dates of surrounding buildings.
The weathered trade sign in painted wood of a former tenant is still
attached to the upper wall, projecting at right-angles to the frontage.
We can make out:
A..[RT?; UCTIONS?]'
ANT.. [IQUES]
Art No...[uveau]'.
It obviously wasn't worth removing! The exterior with its little bay
and dormer windows do not appear to have heavy restoration, hence the
survival of this anachronistic sign. Anyone know the name of the
antiques trader formerly at this address?
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Copyright throughout this site belongs to Borin Van Loon, 2003.