English Buildings

  Occasional haunts… …that just keep on giving: there are certain small towns, mostly in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, that I visit quite...

  Ghosts’ stories I have spent my working life writing and editing illustrated books. Doing this meant paying attention not only to the form...

  Place and taste I was recently reading Adam Nicolson’s Sissinghurst , about the beautiful castle in Kent restored and lived in by his gran...

Fragile with care Back in 2008 I posted a picture of this ghost sign in Gloucester. I used the picture as a jumping-off point for a discuss...

Off piste in Evesham, 1 Sometimes, when I have time on my hands in a familiar place (or a place I think of as familiar) I give myself the si...

Reading matters Even though I no longer use them very much (having more than enough books of my own to read) I am very much in favour of pu...

  Not too distant ‘Decay is a kind of progress’, says Dorothy in Alan Bennett’s hilarious and thoughtful play People . It’s a play with an o...

Logistics, Regency style Although repainted and sliced off on one side, this old sign is still worth pausing to look at. It begs several qu...

Take Courage This is one of my favourite London ghost signs, one that I’ve been meaning to post for a while: now seems like a good time. T...

Morning coffee I've watched with interest the various initiatives over the last few years to record and appreciate the ghost signs...