We photographed this advert last year in the course of a survey of Morriston in Swansea. It’s an evocative example of ‘ghost advertising’, traces of adverts for long lost products that survive on exposed wall faces. In a pure form, the adverts were hand-painted. But maybe we should also include the tin signs that were fixed to buildings.
Tin sign, Fry’s cocoa, Barry, September 2011
There’s a lovely collection online put together by the History Advertising Trust and a report here of a survey of Leeds examples, which the BBC reported on earlier this week. This is the sort of heritage that is inevitably a fading asset, however evocative it may be of something once a familiar part of our streetscape and local character. Incidentally, the Barry house pictured was where the vampires lived in Being human.
The Civic Trust for Wales 
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