Basic HTML Version
13
City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
The sign for an apothecary,
who formulated and
dispensed potions and
powders was a dragon or
more commonly the Mortar
& Pestle. An example of the
latter survives in the old
market town of Faversham in
Kent. The sign of the cobbler
or shoemaker was usually
a pair of shoes or for the
bootmaker a boot as can still
be seen at Lobb’s of St.
James’ s. The Sign displayed
by booksellers was either the
bible, or just a book. The
perfumer’s sign was the Civet
Cat from the anal glands of
which was extracted musk
for perfume as in this
example from Kensington.
Berry Brothers & Rudd the
wine and spirits merchants of
London’s St James was established in 1698 by the
widow Bourne and by 1765 from “the sign of the
coffee mill” were supplying the most highbrow and
fashionable of the coffee houses – the ones that, over
time, would become the Gentlemen’s Clubs such as
Boodles and Whites. The company still trades with
from the sign of the coffee mill and is today run by
an eighth generation Mr. Berry. London’s first
coffee house had been set up just off Cornhill near
St Michael’s church by Pasqua Rosee who chose a
self portrait and traded from
the sign of my head.
Sign boards were also used to identify private
addresses particularly if someone was selling
something from home. For example a man called
John Taylor published a book called
The Certain
Travails
in 1653, on the cover page of which he
gave readers his address as:
‘The Signe of the Pet’s Head in Phoenix Alley
near
the Globe Tavern, in the middle of Long-Acre, nigh
the Covent Garden.”
Trade cards were produced by businesses to
advertise their wares and services from the late
1600s inwards and they give us marvellous
examples of how people described their locations.
The sign mostly used by the grocer was a sugar loaf
which was the traditional form in which refined
sugar was produced and sold until the late 19
th
century. A copper-engraved billhead on which is a
handwritten invoice from April 1779 for ten super
fine sugar loaves was issued by the grocer Thomas
Carr, located at the sign of the Sugar Loaf and
Canister near St Paul's. The number 19 was added
when house numbering was introduced under the 1765
Postage Act. By the 18th century the vast number of
shop signs quite literally darkened the streets and after
a spate of fatal accidents oversized hanging signs were
outlawed and remaining signs heavily regulated in
1762, a fact which led to the fascia shop sign familiar
to us today. It also hastened the introduction of the
numbering system just three years later.