Pump and circumstance*
Sights like this bring back memories of a time when filling up did not involve a major hit on the credit card account and when, with relatively few cars on the road, thoughts of environmental costs were limited mostly to the effects of exhaust fumes on the air quality in big cities. A time, too, when the roads were quiet enough for the pumps to be right on the street, like these. There was no forecourt – you just pulled up and the supply line was long enough to reach your vehicle. These two pumps are on the main street in the centre of Great Missenden, not far from the museum devoted to the life and works of the village’s most famous resident, Roald Dahl. Apparently the Red Pump Garage features in one of Dahl’s books. The bright red pumps very much look the part and presumably their survival is at least in part a tribute to the celebrated author. The notice on the door says they have been “Out of fuel” since eight gallons cost more than a litre. In other words, the place has been closed for years – but it is still a repository of memories.
*Not my joke, alas. This line has already been used as the title of a book on gas stations and by manufacturers of ballet shoes.
8 comments:
Just lovely. And another, now rare, reminder of just how good the BP shield was. As opposed to the Spirograph flower we have to endure now.
Love this photograph. All these charming old garages seem to have vanished. Until relatively recently there was an old fashioned garage very near the entrance to Pinewood Studios, Iver, Buckinghamshire with an Olde Worlde Tudorbeathan thatched roof over the forecourt. Alas, no more.
Luke: Thank you for your comment. Old garages were often in some Olde Worlde style - there were quite a few mock Tudor ones and in Cheltenham in the 1960s there was one designed like a pagoda. They're nearly all gone. The pagoda still has a polygonal pointy roof but is otherwise much changed.
I wonder if it's just nostalgia for what seemed to be a happier bygone age. I guess it is but there's nothing wrong with that.
I seem to remember an old garage somewhere, maybe Hoddesdon, with a corrugated iron roof over the pumps; you would have loved it!
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Peter: Yes! That shield (and the pump tops used by Shell, Mobil, and others) were really effective. One reason for this, in addition to the quality of the symbols themselves, was that pumps in the old days were tall, so the signs on top of them were very visible. When the lower, squatter pumps came in, we took our visual cues from elsewhere.
Philip: Where is/was the pagoda garage in Cheltenham? Is it anything to do with that Rolls-Royce garage on the London Road?
Incidentally, are there any good books on the subject? I like the idea of a photographer tracking down the last remaining garages from this period. I think there's an old pump still standing in St Mawe's Cornwall.
Luke: The garage in Cheltenham is on the road towards Gloucester, on a roundabout as you leave the town centre. The modern signage has obscured most of what is left of the old structure, which was originally designed by Clough Williams-Ellis.
I'm not aware of any books (well, there's a little Shire Book, a booklet really, called The Country Garage). I heard someone was working on a longer book, but there's no sign of it yet.
Bazza: Yes, it's partly nostalgia. There's also a fascination about how these vestiges of the past survive when they have outlived their usefulness - what a commenter on another post called 'stranded things'.
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