On The Road Again

Back in the mists of time, well, 2009 to be precise, I drew attention to the paucity of design and marketing skills that had gone into the replacement Walls Ice Cream 'identity'. Never again, I thought, would we see the bountiful blue swirling letters on a cream background, still doing their job on a fine summer's day. Imagine my joy then, to come up behind this on the road between Caldecott and Uppingham in Rutland. Any minute now, I thought, a Foden petrol tanker will come the other way with 'Regent' on the side. 

Old Walls

I recently went on about the appalling 'W' Wall's Ice Cream identity, but singularly failed to show you how their tin signs once fitted into the English landscape. One can only recoil in horror at the thought of their crass all-purpose heart symbol plastered on to this cottage in Ebrington. I found this photograph, by Noel Hapgood, in Garry Hogg's The Batsford Colour Book of The Cotswolds. Closer inspection will reveal the original Wall's sign, perfectly at home and in scale on this stone-built cottage tucked up in the furthest north east corner of Gloucestershire. Hapgood probably took his picture in the 1960s, and, like so many of the images in these souvenir guides to 'quainte olde Englande', over the years it slowly reveals the treasures of a lost country. The low signpost that Hogg says 'must be for the use of those not yet grown to maturity' and the back of the pre-Warboys road sign on the left that perhaps said 'bend' or 'crossroads' on it. But oh that Wall's sign. Positioned to catch not only the sun, but also the eye of the overheated traveller from Chipping Campden, Charingworth or Paxford.