What colour were W H Smith bookstalls?

[Nearholmer]

….. in the early C20th, and possibly up until as recently as the 1970s (they definitely went brown and orange in 1974 in a big rebranding exercise).

 

My memory tells me that WHS “house colour” was a dark green, and that painted wood on their shops and on station bookstalls was that colour, but:

- have I remembered the green correctly?

 

- did that apply everywhere, or did station bookstalls follow railway company colours?

 

- was the WHS signage also dark green (I seem to remember the lettering being gold), or might it have been red?

 

Finding colour pictures isn’t proving easy.

 

 

Edited January 19 by Nearholmer

[4630]

I know it's Wiki, but is this one close to what you had in mind, if you've not already seen it?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHSmith#/media/File:Horsted_keynes_station_W_H_Smiths_stall.jpg

 

[Nearholmer]

I was trying to find a picture of that, but the answer to your question is “yes, and no”. 
 

That one is very obviously painted in SR “livery”, what I think was “Green No. 3A”, or more generally Middle Chrome Green, which isn’t the shade that I suspect the WHS house colour was. If I’m right, theirs was darker, heading towards bottle green, but I’m far from sure I am right.

 

 

Edited January 19 by Nearholmer

[AY Mod]

19 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

My memory tells me that WHS “house colour” was a dark green, and that painted wood on their shops and on station bookstalls were that colour, but:

 

If you could even see the wood for the ads...

 

 

From https://flashbak.com/london-waterloo-station-in-pictures-409451/ which includes the painting from around the war years in green but there may be some licence used there.

[Nearholmer]

Gosh, what a nostalgia rush!

 

Waterloo station bookstall.

 

Combined Volumes, Ian Allan train postcards, and enamel lapel badges when I was a kid; half ounces of golden Virginia and a packets of rizlas when I was a foolish young man; innumerable editions of the Railway Modeller.

 

Anyway …… I think that is varnished wood under all the stuff, isn’t it?

 

What about shopfronts in the street?

[Bernard Lamb]

22 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I was trying to find a picture of that, but the answer to your question is “yes, and no”. 
 

That one is very obviously painted in SR “livery”, what I think was “Green No. 3A”, or more generally Middle Chrome Green, which isn’t the shade that I suspect the WHS house colour was. If I’m right, theirs was darker, heading towards bottle green, but I’m far from sure I am right.

 

 

I would go along with you and  a darker shade of green. Something near to what is often called British Racing Green. I had a die cast model back around the mid 1950s, so it is a pretty distant memory. We are either both right or both wrong.

Bernard 

[bécasse]

Yes, they were darker, but not much darker, than the Southern building colour green, with gold lettering. Pre-war they often had trestle tables out front, covered with a cloth (also possibly dark green), with piles of books on them.

[Old Gringo]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

….. in the early C20th, and possibly up until as recently as the 1970s (they definitely went brown and orange in 1974 in a big rebranding exercise).

 

My memory tells me that WHS “house colour” was a dark green, and that painted wood on their shops and on station bookstalls was that colour, but:

- have I remembered the green correctly?

 

- did that apply everywhere, or did station bookstalls follow railway company colours?

 

- was the WHS signage also dark green (I seem to remember the lettering being gold), or might it have been red?

 

Finding colour pictures isn’t proving easy.

 

 

 

Hi Kevin,

 

Here's a (recent - May 2018) picture of the W.H.S Kiosk on Kidderminster Station, which is in the dark green.  Hopefully, it is as close to the original colour as they could manage.

Shame they couldn't manage the gold lettering, or perhaps that was only used at important main line termini?

 

All the very best,

John 

[Nearholmer]

Ah, now, that’s definitely the colour I remember; thank you!

 

And, Bernard, is this the one? https://www.jwmodelrailways.com/product-page/wardie-master-models-no-14-bookstall-unboxed
 

 

Edited January 19 by Nearholmer

[Tom Burnham]

Although I also seem to recall gold lettering on varnished wood ..

[Nearholmer]

Yes, and I think the lettering on the green was gold/straw at some stages. They also had an oval enclosing the letters WHS as a logo, I think in the 1930s, but I’m getting prepared to paint a small pre-WW1 one, not this one, but of this general kind:

 

 

The lettering is quite distinctive, and I might have to resort to using this photo to create the signboard - I can’t think of another viable way. I actually wonder if this lettering is incised into wood, or reverse-painted in glass.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 19 by Nearholmer

[D9020 Nimbus]

10 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

Although I also seem to recall gold lettering on varnished wood ..

The original bookstall on Newcastle Central Station in the early 1970s was like that. By the time the store in the city centre — near Grey's Monument in Eldon Square, not the current one on Northumberland Street — opened, grey and orange was the style.

Edited January 19 by D9020 Nimbus

[Nearholmer]

One worry I had was that I’d based my mental image on an  Airfix kit, which may or may not have been painted appropriately.

 

Mine had more brush marks than this!

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

Wymans station bookstalls were painted in a dark green colour.  They seemed to be the usual bookstall found on Western stations which I can't recall as ever having WHS bookstalls until very late on.

[russ p]

The one that was at Sheringham that my much missed late friend had as GE models was dark wood colour 

[Nearholmer]

11 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

They seemed to be the usual bookstall found on Western stations which I can't recall as ever having WHS bookstalls until very late on.

Someone was telling me earlier that WHS and the GWR fell out with one another at an early stage.

[Nearholmer]

Well, it seems that the typeface used by WHS from c1905 was designed by no less a person (and no weirder, or more perverted a person) than Eric Gill. No wonder it manages to somehow lift and dignify that tin hut in the photo I posted above.

 

Interesting read: https://buildingourpast.com/2017/03/23/a-spotters-guide-to-w-h-smiths/

 

The typeface: 

 

 

But, notice that the sign writer for my hut-shop has departed from the guide, using sloped lower case ‘e’, and a few other minor tweaks, most noticeable of which is the overlapped ‘oo’.

 

 

Edited January 19 by Nearholmer

[MartinRS]

Here's a link to a photo of the W H Smith historic kiosk on the station platform at Loughborough Central Railway Station.

[Nearholmer]

Another good one!

 

Whether on not they’ve got the green right is clearly open for debate (maybe the LNER and SR insisted on matches to their own), but they’ve done a cracking job on the lettering and the logo. Look at that very distinctive crossed-over ‘W’.

[Bernard Lamb]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Ah, now, that’s definitely the colour I remember; thank you!

 

And, Bernard, is this the one? https://www.jwmodelrailways.com/product-page/wardie-master-models-no-14-bookstall-unboxed
 

 

That looks very like it.

Bernard

[NVRWagons]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Another good one!

 

Whether on not they’ve got the green right is clearly open for debate (maybe the LNER and SR insisted on matches to their own), but they’ve done a cracking job on the lettering and the logo. Look at that very distinctive crossed-over ‘W’.

When I volunteered on the GCR I painted and sign-wrote that Kiosk.

It’s Buckingham Green, with Holborn Cream lettering. 

Can’t find my original research but that’s what I found out, after contacting WH Smiths

The kiosk was also built for a film and retained.

Edited January 19 by NVRWagons

[roythebus1]

I happened to work at WH Smith in earls Court in 1969/1970. their main kiosk on the Earls Court Road District Line concourse was brown varnished wood, as was the small rush-hour only kiok on the Eastbound District Line platforms. Gold lettering. Manning the concourse shop got a bit tedious with the lift to the Piccadilly Line announcing "stand clear of the gates" every 2 minutes!!

[RichardT]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Well, it seems that the typeface used by WHS from c1905 was designed by no less a person (and no weirder, or more perverted a person) than Eric Gill. No wonder it manages to somehow lift and dignify that tin hut in the photo I posted above.

 

You’ve beaten me to it, so the only thing I can add is that Gill’s serif WHS lettering is indirectly responsible for Gill Sans.

Frank Pick required from Edward Johnston a letterform for UERL/LER signage that would be clearly distinguishable from the commercial lettering already common on Underground, of which that on WHS bookstalls was the most prominent, so that passengers would automatically recognise it as directional signage not an advertisement.  The result was Johnston’s sans-serif Railway Alphabet, which was an immediate success.

 

Johnston’s letterform (not a “font”) was trade-marked by the UERL for their exclusive use. Spotting a gap in the market Monotype commissioned Eric Gill to “design” as close a copy of Johnston Sans as he could get away with which they could sell to other users - the LNER being an early adopter.  Gill admitted the copying in a letter to Johnston (his former teacher) and amazingly got away with it - Johnston was rather unworldly when it came to money matters, but I’m surprised that Pick and Ashfield didn’t “have a word” with Monotype. Then again, they soon after used Gill for some of the sculptures on 55 Broadway.

 

Spotters note: the big giveaway between Johnston & Gill Sans is the capital letters R. Johnston’s is not very elegant: looks like P held up with a pit-prop. Gill’s has a more elegant curved prop.

And getting back on-topic, I remember the WHS bookstall in front of the old signalbox at York (before they moved the shop into the bottom of the signalbox) being brown varnished wood. Can’t remember the lettering colour but I’ve always assumed white/cream or gold. But I was only eleven and that’s now a while ago.

 

RichardT

 

 

Edited January 19 by RichardT

[Nearholmer]

Was there some stage then, when it wasn’t known to all and sundry that Gill Sans was a minor tweaking of Johnston? I thought it was openly acknowledged from the outset.

 

PS: I don’t like Gill Sans, or the WHS lettering much because the capital E and F feel wrong to me. I think in Johnston, certainly in the current NJ version, they feel less likely to fall over, because the middle horizontal is shorter.

 

 

Edited January 19 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, NVRWagons said:

When I volunteered on the GCR I painted and sign-wrote that Kiosk.

Bloody well done!