I CAN very easily remember the first ever ‘ghost sign’ I saw in Edinburgh.
Our family had just moved to Bruntsfield Place and, there, as I looked up to the first-floor level of a tenement block on Barclay Place, was a hand-painted sign for R. Dolan Chimney Sweeper.
I was born in Ottawa, Canada, and grew up in a fairly rural semi-suburban town in Québec. We moved to Edinburgh in 1988, and looking back, it’s fair to say that, other than watching Mary Poppins, I hadn’t encountered the concept of a chimney sweep prior to noticing this unassuming sign.
It seemed old-fashioned, echoing a long-forgotten time.
It would take me several years to start to regularly use the phrase, ‘ghost sign’. But it had slowly begun to enter common usage around the time when photographer, William Stages, produced a book, Ghost Signs: Brick Wall Signs in America (here), published in 1989.
With an interest in ephemera, a romantic sense of nostalgia, a general curiosity, plus a tendency to always have a camera in my hand, it’s unsurprising that what began as a casual noticing of old signage eventually turned into an active hobby of sorts.
And so, searching for ghost signs is something that has followed me through the decades.
Oftentimes, a distraction to a well-trodden walk or bus ride to work; sometimes, as a means of scrutinising a new neighbourhood; othertimes, as a part of a photographic hunt in a new city whilst travelling.
What do ghost signs represent in Edinburgh?
There are so many layers to what a ghost sign can reveal - it’s Leith’s incredible maritime and trading heritage of ship’s victuallers, glass merchants and chandlers. It’s the old bonded whisky warehouses.
It’s the New Town’s Edwardian tea and luncheon rooms, its many banks and goods merchants.
The Victorian pianoforte sales rooms.
Elsewhere, it’s the small family-run businesses which every local neighbourhood depended on around the city - the forgotten tailors, dairies, wine & spirits merchants, fishmongers, greengrocers, tobacconists, butchers & poulterers, pawnbrokers.
In many respects, we’re incredibly lucky to have such a rich array of ghost signs in Edinburgh, particularly in the Old and New Town areas.
However, unlike so many of the world’s cities, the ghost signs that we see here are rarely about commercial brands; they are more likely to be about trades and business names.
Ghost signs to me represent a significant creative heritage too. The craft of the signwriters, stone carvers, and mosaic tilers inadvertently reveal changing fashions for letterform, fonts and graphics.
There is art in these trades, and whilst trends change, it’s reassuring to know that signwriting is still a valuable skill, as I see an increasing shift, certainly among independently-run businesses, towards hand-painted signage, or even custom-made neon.
Sometimes a ghost sign only reappears for a tantalising, fleeting week or two during refurbishment works, before being covered over again for however many years to come, patiently waiting for a future moment to shine.
Others, like a decades-old sign for a flat for sale above the Cowgate inexplicably, stubbornly remain long after their original purpose.
It’s rare that a walk doesn’t involve passing a much-loved ghost sign, and on a good day there’s the satisfying moment of spotting something for the first time, whether recently uncovered, or only-just noticed.
Those are the moments, camera or smart-phone in hand ready to capture a previously-hidden gem, that fuel the fledgling ghost sign hunter’s enthusiasm and which can, very quickly, turn into a passion.
Leila Kean works in food and drink brand development and is the founder of Ghost Signs Edinburgh on Facebook and @EdinburghGhostSigns on Instagram.
Image details: Victoria Street; copyright Mike Wilson