Ogden's 'By the Roadside' cigarette card set, 1932

The link here with Frank Patterson's drawing of Ribchester in the previous post is that No.35 in Ogden's 'By the Roadside' set of cigarette cards is of the Norman chapel at Stidd, just outside Ribchester. The other forty nine cards in the series depict features of historical or natural interest in the countryside and ancient market towns - primarily of England, with just two of the subjects being from Scotland. On the reverse of each card is a brief description of the site and its history.


Every card incorporates a little circular map above the primary image showing its location and the main routes for getting there from principal centres up to ten miles away. The implication is that this was a suitable destination for a trip out by bike or by car.


UK tobacco companies began including illustrated cards in packs of cigarettes, initially as stiffeners, in the 1880s. By the 1930s the practice was at its peak and had developed its full marketing potential. Ogden's, part of the Imperial Tobacco Company, had joined in by the 1890s. Thousands of sets on popular subjects of the day were issued and avidly collected, and not only by small boys.

The sites chosen for this series give a glimpse into the manner in which heritage, the countryside, and leisure were being bracketed together in mainstream culture at the time. The full list of subjects is:
1. Shodfriars Hall, Boston, Lincs
2. Market Cross & stocks, Bottesford, Leics
3. The Bowder Stone, Borrowdale, Cumberland
4. Old Bridge and Chapel, Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts
5. Bronze Tables, Corn Street, Bristol
6. Market Cross, Castle Combe, Wilts
7. The Cross, Chester
8. All Saints, Chesterfield, Derbyshire
9. Wool Market, Chipping Campden, Gloucs
10. Triangular Bridge, Crowland, Lincolnshire
11. The Butter Market, Dartmouth, Devonshire
12. Yarn Market, Dunster, Somersetshire
13. Buttress, All Saints’ Church, Dunwich, Suffolk
14. Old Canongate Tollbooth, Edinburgh
15. Queen Eleanor Cross, Geddington, Northants
16. The Abbot’s Kitchen, Glastonbury, Som
17. Saxon Church, Greensted, nr Chipping Ongar, Essex
18. Hadrian’s Wall, near Hexham, Northumberland
19. Old Windmill, Hemingford grey, Huntingdonshire
20. The ‘Old House’, Hereford
21. The Guildhall, King’s Lynn, Norfolk
22. Saxon ‘King’s Stone’, Kingston-Upon-Thames
23. Lamarsh Church, Essex
24. Market Hall, Ledbury, Herefordshire
25. Market Cross, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire
26. The ‘Jews House’, Lincoln
27. Maiden Castle, near Dorchester
28. Old Grammar School, Market Harborough, Leics
29. The Old Cross, Meriden, Warwicks
30. Iron Cresset, Monken Hadley Church, near Barnet
31. Monkwearmouth Church, Sunderland
32. Butter Cross and Stocks, Oakham, Rutland
33. Old Cottages, pembridge, Herefordshire
34. Smithy, Penshurst, Kent
35. Stidd Chapel, Ribchester, Lancashire
36. Nuns’ House, Rochester, Kent
37. Rufus Stone, near Lyndhurst, Hampshire
38. A quaint street, St Ives, Cornwall
39. Old Bridge, St Ives, Huntingdonshire
40. 9th century crosses, Sandbach, Cheshire
41. Sompting Church, Sussex
42. Sundial and Lock-up, Steeple Ashton, Wiltshire
43. Beheading Stone, Stirling
44. Stokesay Castle, Shropshire
45. Harvard House, Stratford-upon-Avon
46. Turton Tower, Turton, Lancs
47. Waltham Abbey, Essex
48. Butter Cross, Witney, Oxfordshire
49. Market Cross, Wymondham, Norfolk
50. Clifford’s Tower, York

Frank Patterson, cycling artist, 1920s

Staying with the theme of cycling and the countryside, here is an orignal pen and ink drawing from 1929 by the most renowned of all cycling artists, Frank Patterson (1871-1952). For more than half a century from 1893, he provided a constant flow of distinctive illustrations for Cycling magazine. And from 1925 he was doing the same for the Cyclists' Touring Club Gazette. Ribchester, the subject here on the left, is a village of Roman origin that sits in a curve of the river Ribble. Roughly midway between Preston and Clitheroe, it is in ideal weekend cycling country.


Through thousands of drawings, all in this finely observed style, Patterson captured the essence of the early twentieth century countryside and the joy of exploring it on two wheels in such a way that associating cycling with the rural landscape became fixed in the cultural memory.


Patterson himself was a keen cyclist in his younger days until a knee injury forced him to give up at the age of 35. After completing his studies at Portsmouth Art School, he moved to London in search of work as a jobbing artist and for recreation took to cycling in rural parts south of the capital.


From 1898, Patterson lived and worked deep in the countryside at Pear Tree Farm near Billingshurst, West Sussex. Initially, it was rented at 9d a year and then in 1902 purchased for £5 (in 2008 it was on the market for £1.45 million). Here he lived a dual life, working his land and engaging in country pursuits in the morning whilst afternoons were spent in the study, fulfilling his contract of ten drawings a week for the magazine publishers Temple Press.



A second Patterson drawing we have acquired for the project, this one dated 1924.

Cyclists' Touring Club sign, 1930s

These signs were once a common feature of the countryside, (and some are still to be found) attached to the front walls of selected hotels, bed and breakfast establishments, and tea shops where the Cyclists' Touring Club member would receive a preferential rate. This enamel type appeared in the 1930s, replacing a larger shield-shaped cast iron version that had been used hitherto. The wheel and wings emblem was adopted in 1886, eight years after the Club's foundation to promote the interests of serious 'cycle tourists'. Improvements to cycle technology, including the introduction of the Rover Safety bicycle in 1885 and of pneumatic tyres in 1888, made it a popular form of leisure transport for exploring the countryside and by 1900 the Club had over 60,000 members. Thereafter, it waned somewhat as the early motor car started to attract attention but then came back strongly after the First World War. In the 1930s, the Club enjoyed royal patronage from both George V and George VI.


The Club's Annual Guide listed thousands of cyclist friendly establishments by county with their current charges. Each county had a local club representative, known as the Chief Consul.


On request, the Club would draw up recommended excursion routes for members to follow for a cycling holiday. In 1955, the first in a series of special cycle-rail day trips was organised with the participants being delivered out of London to a rural spot from where local members would guide them on a circular tour.

Woodcraft Folk badge, 1951

It is not uncommon for the countryside to assume importance in our culture as a kind of polar opposite to the city. If the countryside might be seen as embodying health, beauty and goodness then it follows that the city represents the reverse: disease, ugliness and evil. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was concern in some quarters that the growing urban mass of population in the towns and cities was itself being imbued with these qualities. How could the nation continue to manage and control a far-flung empire if the regenerative capacity of its people were subject to moral and physical corruption? The result was a rash of uniformed, semi-militaristic youth organisations aimed at easing the urban adolescent’s turbulent passage into civilised adulthood by teaching the virtues of loyalty, self-discipline and exercise. The most successful of these was Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouting movement of 1908, based in no small degree on a youth group called the Woodcraft Indians that was founded in the US by Ernest Thompson Seton in 1902. Seton’s group raised to a heroic ideal the outdoor life, the bush skills of self-reliance, and the communal life of camping as practiced by the native American Indian.

After the First World War, some looked to continue these interests in the character-building pursuit of outdoor life but without the quasi-military overtones of national chauvinism. Out of this came The Woodcraft Folk movement, which was instigated by Leslie Paul and first appeared in Lewisham, south London, in 1925. Adopting its tribal training philosophy from Seton, it placed camping and open air activities like hiking, together with pageantry, at the heart of its programme. Unlike scouting, it was an avowedly working class organisation, open to girls as well as boys from the start, and aligned with the international cooperative and socialist movements.

The Woodcraft Folk never had mass appeal at the time - 5,000 members by 1939 - and was variously criticised in some quarters for supposed pacifist or communist sympathies. Its connections with international childrens' organisations and its international camps - the badge above is from the 1951 camp held in connection with the Festival of Britain - remain a vital component of its work. In the last quarter of the century, the movement enjoyed a revival as its positive environmental credentials received wider recognition.

Emmerdale Farm poster, 1977

How does TV affect cultural perceptions of the countryside? Does it reflect them or does it shape them - or perhaps a bit of both? Certainly, over the last quarter of the century there was plenty of material, with Yorkshire featuring particularly strongly. Last of the Summer Wine, for example, the world's longest running sitcom, first appeared on the BBC in 1973 and continues to be filmed in and around Holmfirth. Thirsk was the setting for All Creatures Great and Small based on James Herriot's vet stories and first screened over the period 1978-90. Always in ITV's top five performing shows since 1992 has been Heartbeat, a gently nostalgic rural police drama set in the 1960s and filmed around Goathland on the North Yorkshire moors. In each case the programmes have spawned lasting local tourist industry initiatives - Visit Herriot Country etc.

And then there is Emmerdale Farm. Conceived as a kind of televisual Archers, it was first screened in October 1972 with the Sugden family and their farm providing the core storyline. Arncliffe in north Yorkshire was the location for the early shooting, followed by Esholt near Bradford from the mid 1970s. Since 1989, the programme has been known simply as Emmerdale to indicate its transition to a general purpose early evening rural soap. It remains at No.3 in the TV soap rankings. Shooting now takes place at a purpose-built village set on the Harewood estate near Leeds.

I have dated the poster to 1977 because this is the year that Hugh Manning, the Vicar in the picture, first appeared. Trident Television, listed at the bottom, had ceased by 1982. No doubt Emmerdale aficionados will correct me if I'm wrong!

The Pony Club, 1929

This recently acquired sign relates to one of those key communities of interest in the twentieth century countryside - the Pony Club. The arrival of riding as an organised leisure and sporting activity for children owes much to the rise of an affluent middle class with rural connections in the decades either side of mid-century.

The Institute of the Horse inaugurated its junior branch, the Pony Club, on November 1st 1929 with the aim of 'interesting young people in riding and sport and at the same time offering the opportunity of higher instruction in this direction than many of them can obtain individually'. A nationwide network of district committees was set up, closely allied to the territory and organisation of local Hunts. By 1931, there were 59 Pony Club Branches, with a total membership of just over 4,400. In 1958, membership stood at over 25,000.

An enduring favourite, the Pony Club camp, made its first appearance in 1931 and the sign above is evidence of efforts at the time to create riding-friendly establishments around the countryside.


In 1934, the Institute of the Horse and Pony Club merged with the National Horse Association of Great Britain to form the British Horse Society, with the Pony Club as one of its constituent parts.

The Pony Club now has over 110,000 members spread through 18 countries and celebrated its 80th year in 2009 with the opening of new offices at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire, and the announcement of a new President, Lady Lloyd-Webber.

Bluebell Farm, 1996

This is L2013, Bluebell Farm, in the Lilliput Lane collection of country cottages which was available from 1996-99. Lilliput Lane Ltd was the creation of David Tate (1945-) who combined his natural artistic talents with practical production skills picked up in the army and a passion for vernacular architecture to launch in 1982 a company devoted to making detailed models of country cottages for general sale.


It started as a small family business based in the outbuildings of a Georgian mansion just outside Penrith. Fourteen models were initially on offer but thereafter the number rapidly increased as the popularity of the range grew.


Each one was very carefully researched and packed with detail to reflect the vernacular style and materials traditonally used in different parts of the country. Often, the models are based on a real building, in this case Tang House Farm at High Birstwith in North Yorkshire (photo below by Claire Scott)


Using moulds made from a hand-crafted master, the models are cast in Amorphite plaster and then painted by hand. The Lilliput range has been highly successful worldwide with its most ardent followers to be found amongst the 50,000 strong Collectors Club. It has turned the rural heritage into marketable form with mass appeal.

Clarice Cliff, 1930s

Even Clarice Cliff (1899-1972),who took the pottery world by storm from the late 1920s with her bold and colourful art deco designs, could not avoid traditional imagery of the countryside.


This is her Farmhouse pattern - with thatched roof inevitably - which made its first appearance in 1931. It's on the conical bowl shape that Cliff introduced in 1929, one of a series of new designs that were brought in as the stock of the old Newport Pottery - which had been taken over by Wilkinson's and which Cliff used for her early output - ran down.


The base of the bowl bears the name of Wilkinson Ltd, the firm in Middleport near Stoke that Clarice Cliff joined as a decorator in 1916. Here her creative talent in hand-painting of pottery was spotted and nurtured by Colley Shorter, one of the firm's directors and, ultimately, her husband. Also there is the brand-name Bizarre which Cliff used in the early period of 1928-1935 to give her ware a distinctive cachet. This bowl therefore dates from between 1931 and 1935, the heyday of Clarice Cliff output.


A hierarchy of three groups of workers, most of them female, decorated the ware: the outliners who drew the pattern, the enamellers who painted in the colours, and the banders who applied the bright colourful rings.

When production resumed after the Second World War, Clarice Cliff took more of a back seat. On the death of Colley Shorter in 1963, she sold the Wilkinson firm to Midwinter.

'Cottage Ware' tea sets, 1940s

Kitsch is probably the word that would now most immediately come to mind here. But there is a lot of cottage ware still around from a variety of makers which suggests that it must have been widely popular at the time. It's those cosy cultural associations of the thatched cottage working their magic again. This set was made by Price Bros (Burslem) Ltd, a firm that began in 1896 and continued after 1962 as Price and Kensington Potteries Ltd. The design, number 845007, was registered in 1945.


This was a present for your auntie in the era of post-war austerity, with the old design imagery of the '30s still holding sway before '50s fashion found its feet. There is no sign of these sets actually having been used so I suspect they went into the glass cabinet in the front room, for show, which helps to explain why so many have survived.


The other set in this genre is by the Keele Street Pottery of Stoke whose origins go back to 1915. After being closed during World War Two, production resumed in 1946 and cottage ware was added to the range shortly after. As a way of rebuilding the nation's finances, there was much emphasis at the time on the export trade and the connection here of tea drinking with rustic imagery from the old country found much customer interest overseas.

Shell Guide to the Roads of Britain, 1965

This straight stetch of the A15 in Lincolnshire sits on top of the original Roman road, Ermine Street, which linked London to York. It is one in a series of four poster advertisements that Shell produced on a roads theme, using paintings commissioned from David Gentleman(1930-). The other three are the Berkshire Ridgeway, Sewston Lane and Corrieyairack Pass.

They were used as eye catching full-colour advertisements in up-market magazines such as Country Life. They are subtle in approach, with a low key and almost subliminal message at the bottom: 'Go Well-Go Shell. The Key to the Countryside'.

This is very much in a tradition of Shell advertising going back to the 1920s in which commissioned works from known or up and coming artists were combined with catchy slogans to identify the product with the joys of exploring the countryside by motor car, and wed the company name to heritage and landscape and everything the nation held dear. The campaign took published form with the Shell County Guides series, beginning with John Betjemain's Cornwall in 1934 and running on through to the 1980s.

David Gentleman, painter of the Ermine Street image above, is one of the most successful commercial artists and illustrators of his generation with a portfolio embracing the whole spectrum from postage stamps to campaign posters and from murals to bookjackets. He married the daughter of George Ewart Evans (1909-88), the famed recorder of East Anglian oral tradition whose many works include Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay (1956), and has a close connection with rural Suffolk. His father, Tom Gentleman (1882-1966)was also a commercial artist and included some Shell advertising material amongst his commissions as well as an inclusion in the School Prints series (see earlier post).

Stubble burning is shown in process just off to the right of the road. This operation became steadily more controversial for the hazard it posed to buildings, flora and fauna, and road users, and was finally banned in 1993.

Shell Chemicals, enamelled sign, 1960s

The design of the Shell 'pecten' logo on this sign dates it to the early 1960s. Shell's involvement in petrochemicals goes back to the late 1920s and by the 1950s it was investing heavily in the agricultural side. The Second World War emergency had fast-tracked development of new pesticides, such as the chlorinated hydrocarbon DDT, and powerful selective herbicides such as the phenoxyacetic compound 2,4-D. Shell offered DDT in dust, liquid and wettable powder form for control of leaf-eating insects and 2,4-D under the name Shell D 50 for control of weeds in cereals and grassland. By 1962, the company was one of the key players in the 33-member Association of British Manufacturers of Agricultural Chemicals with a total annual output between them worth £14 million using 75 chemicals to produce 566 approved products.

In the 1950s, Shell Chemicals Ltd produced a delightful booklet Farm Weeds. An Aid to their Recognition with pages of colour plates reproduced from watercolours by Doris R.Thompson.


In his Foreword, J.Hunt, Manager of the Agricultural Development Department of Shell Chemicals Ltd, wrote 'The control of weeds by chemicals has been one of the outstanding features of progress in farming methods during recent years, but the successful use of chemicals depends, in part, on accurate and early recognition of the weeds to be treated, while they are still in the early stages of growth'.

It was something of a 50s golden age for the industry. The atmosphere began to change with the publication in 1962 of Silent Spring by the American Rachel Carson in which she laid the foundations of the modern environmental movement by questioning the long term impact on health and ecology of organochlorine insecticides and the arsenical compounds present in synthetic pesticides. In the UK, the Agricultural Research Council's 1964 Report of the Research Committee on Toxic Chemicals called amongst other things for the development of more selective and safer pesticides of limited persistence; for new toxicological and biological studies in birds and wild life; and for an evaluation of the toxicological significance of the presence of pesticides in human body tissue. DDT was banned for most purposes in the US in 1972, in the UK in 1984, and is now barred from agricultural use worldwide by the Stockholm Convention.

Odams enamelled advertising sign, 1930s

This firm was started by James Odams in 1855 and was based in the Silvertown area of the east London docklands. It was one of many springing up at the time on a rising agricultural market for manufactured fertiliser. In particular, the production of superphosphate was accelerating as the science of the day demonstrated the beneficial effects on crop yields. It involved mixing animal bones, subsequently replaced largely by imported mineral phosphate, with sulphuric acid in a process that was both acrid and hazardous. Dockside locations were common because here the raw materials were readily available - the slaughterhouses for imported cattle for example. By the outbreak of the First World War, the industry in this country was producing getting on for 2 million tons of superphospahte annually.

There were other forms of manufactured fertiliser that Odams were involved with and made connections between urban life, manufacturing industry and the countryside. Sulphate of ammonia, a source of nitrogen for farmers when turned into granular form, was made from the waste products of town gasworks. Basic slag, a residue from steelworks, was high in phosphate and when ground into a powder was recommended for use on grassland.

This sign dates from the 1930s and was made by Wildman & Meguyer (1933) Ltd of Birmingham. Odams were take over by Fisons in 1937 during a period of consolidation of the industry into the hands of a few major conglomerates.


An advertisement from 1935.


Permanent pasture near Scarborough, Yorks, being treated with 3 cwts per acre of Fisons No.1 Granulated Fertiliser in 1953.

Representing Rurality

A one-day conference arising from this project, entitled Representing Rurality: Culture & the Countryside in the Twentieth Century, was held at the Museum of English Rural Life on November 4th 2009. It was attended by 22 museum professionals and 27 academics and research students drawn from around the country (+ one delegate from Belgium).

The programme:
The Collecting 20thc Rural Culture Project
Dr Roy Brigden, Keeper, Museum of English Rural Life

Collecting Twentieth Century Landscape
Professor David Matless, Professor of Cultural Geography, University of Nottingham

Treasuring Things of the Least: Village Museums in England in the 1920s and 1930s
Bridget Yates, Research student, University of Gloucestershire

Printing for victory: Abram Games and Grow your own food
Paul Stiff, Reader, Dept of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading

Little Red Tractors
Dr Clare Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Sheffield

Running Wild and Ridden: Observation and re-presentation of native ponies and their wild habitats in the work of Allen W.Seaby (1867-1953)
Jenny Kendrick, Research student, children’s literature, Roehampton University, London

England itself: The Inn and the Interwar Countryside
Dr Stella Moss, St John’s College, University of Oxford

An alternative view: The South Downs in the mid-twentieth century as seen on aerial photographs
Edward Carpenter, English Heritage

Short insights into a variety of cultures of the countryside in East Anglia
Dr Veronica Sekules, Head of Education & Research, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia.

A discussion at the end was led by a panel comprising Professor John Sheail, Dr Paul Brassley and chaired by Professor Alun Howkins.

Given that much of the project to date has been looking at the twentieth century countryside from within the context of an urban society, one of the lines of discussion that recurred during the day was whether there was in rural areas something that could still be identified as an indigenous culture - with a sense of its own difference and separateness but otherwise largely hidden from view to outsiders – which this project should seek out and record.

There was also some debate about how artefact collections within rural and social history museums generally could be promoted more widely as a research resource amongst the academic community. Proposals were suggested for following this up through a session at the international conference Rural History 2010 to be held in Brighton.

Caravans and the countryside

The twentieth century countryside, and particularly its main roads in holiday time, would not be complete without the caravan. As far back as 1907, the Caravan Club was founded in London to bring together those with a common interest in caravanning - primarily the horse drawn version at that date - as a pastime. By the 1930s, when these 'Minic' clockwork toys were first introduced by Triang, the motor car and caravan was on its way to becoming part of the scenery. In our version, the caravan itself is still tinplate and the same as the original but the car has been upgraded to plastic, indicating a date of about 1950.

Caravan Club membership numbers of 1,300 in 1937 had risen to over 4,000 ten years later and in 1952 the Duke of Edinburgh became Patron. Nowadays, membership stands at over 350,000.


As numbers of caravanners grew, so did tensions between the freedom to enjoy the countryside and efforts to protect areas of scenic beauty. The aerial images below are of Leysdown in Kent in 1960 and Thornwick Bay in Yorkshire in 1966.

Youth Hostels

The Youth Hostel Association is one of those important stakeholder groups of the twentieth century operating at the interface between town and country. So we have been picking up some YHA ephemera. Youth hostelling was a German idea. The first hostel was opened in 1909 by a Westphalian schoolteacher, Richard Schirrmann, who was convinced of the spiritual need for young people to enjoy healthy exercise in the open air away from the drabness of city life. He planned a chain of hostels, or 'Jugendherbergen', each a day's walk through the countryside from the next.


The Youth Hostel Association of Great Britain was formed in 1930 along very similar lines. This membership card from 1947 and 48 lists the objects of the Association as 'To help all, but especially young people, to a greater knowledge, care and love of the countryside, particularly by providing hostels or other simple accommodation for them in their travels.'


It shows that the holder, Grace Pett a young south London schoolteacher, stayed at hostels in Derbyshire, Cornwall and Scotland.

The Association grew rapidly. Twelve hostels were opened in the first year and there were 297 by 1939. In 1950 membership topped 250,000.

The eighteenth century Houghton Mill near Huntingdon was converted into Youth Hostel accommodation in 1934 and was one of the first hostels in the Cambridge Regional Group. Access to the men's dormitory was up two flights of ladders and water for washing had to be gathered in buckets from the River Ouse below. During the Second War, when there was a scarcity of resident wardens, Vera Watson kept the hostel open at weekends by cycling the fifteen miles out from Cambridge each Friday and returning on Monday mornings. The mill ceased to be a hostel in 1983.

Two Land Rover models

The story of the Land Rover has come up before - how it was introduced in 1948 as a general purpose agricultural vehicle and subseqently morphed into a urban style icon - because of what it says about the wider cultural tentacles of the countryside in the second half of the century.

These two model sets illustrate that process of transformation. Both are by Corgi Toys, a brand launched by the Mettoy Company in 1956, and both comprise Land Rover and horse trailer combinations with Pony Club transfers. The Pony Club, an umbrella organisation for young riders, dates back to 1929 but its membership really took off during the 1950s and had reached over 31,000, spread through 255 UK branches, by 1962.


The first set is one that was introduced in 1968 with a short wheel base Land Rover, canvas top, normal livery and sandard wheels. This is still identifiably a farm vehicle.

The other one dates from 1979 and incorporates some significant differences. Now it is a long wheelbase Land Rover with flashy metallic colouring, big chunky wheels and a definitely non-agricultural roof accessory.


The journey towards the Chelsea tractor had begun.

Oak sideboard/dresser c.1905

This fine piece, made by the firm of Shapland & Petter of Barnstaple, was acquired a few months back and has now gone on display. It represents the point at the beginning of the twentieth century when the Arts and Crafts style, with its focus on craftsmanship and rural romanticism, chimed with the fashionable tastes of a burgeoning urban middle class. Through a re-working of the farmhouse dresser of old came a piece of urban chic for the Edwardian villa.

Shapland & Petter were in a leading group of makers that maintained their commitment to quality and craftsmanship whilst organising their production on industrial lines. The oak for this piece was probably imported from America and full use was made of machinery for production of some of the component parts. In this way they were able to produce a very large range of furniture in many different customised versions at a reasonable price.

The distinctive wardrobes, overmantles, chairs, bookcases and hallstands etc produced by Shapland & Petter were sold through agents and retailers around the country and Europe. The firm also had its own shop in Berners St, just off Oxford St in London and not far from Regent St where Liberty & Co were competitors.

The business was started by Henry Shapland, a cabinet maker from Barnstaple, in the middle of the nineteenth century. He had travelled to America and brought back ideas on mechanised manufacture of quality furniture. He took Henry Petter into partnership in 1865 and within a few years over a hundred men were being employed. In 1888, after a fire, the firm relocated to a new factory – the Raleigh Cabinet Works - in Barnstaple. The town had a tradition of crafts skills from lacemaking times, a thriving School of Art at the end of the nineteenth century and the Barnstaple Guild of Metalworkers.


One of the renowned designers associated with Shapland & Petter was William Cowie (see some of his designs above), a product of the Barnstaple School of Art, who was responsible for this piece. It bears a number of the Shapland & Petter hallmarks for their Arts and Crafts years: squared spindles, cut-out hearts, geometric arch, long strap hinges and decorative metalwork.

It's Quicker By Rail, 1930s

The famous It's Quicker by Rail slogan was widely used by the London and North Eastern Railway in the 1920s and 30s. It followed the reorganisation of the railway network in 1922, which resulted in the emergence of the LNER, and the appointment of William Teasdale as its advertising manager the following year. Teasdale was a great believer in the power of poster advertising and commissioned a number of well known artists at the time to design them.

This one is by Guy Seymour Malet (1900-73) who combined the talents of painter, engraver and writer, and who had studied at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in the 1920s.

Posters such as this were intended to catch the eye of passengers as they idled away their time on a draughty and perhaps depressing platform. They use attractive and relaxing images of the countryside, with their attendant associations based on traditional English virtues of trust and reliability, to represent rail travel in a pure and positive light.

Escape from the town, 1920s

The two posters here, recently acquired, date from 1926. The message on both is central to the theme of this project and the relationship between town and country. They are by F.Gregory Brown (1887-1941), well known in the interwar years as a landscape painter, illustrator and textile designer. For the railway companies, the great popularity at the time of hiking and rambling offered positive marketing opportunities for their commuter routes in the off-peak weekend periods.


Writing of Manchester in this time, C.E.M.Joad wrote 'singly, in couples, in groups or organized in clubs young people have formed the habit of going on Saturdays and Sundays and, increasingly, for the whole weekend, into the country. You can see the living witnesses of this revolution at the Central Station at Manchester early on a Sunday morning, complete with rucksacks, shorts and hob-nailedboots, waiting for the early trains to Edale, Hope and the Derbyshire moors. Looking at them, one might be tempted to think that the whole of Manchester was in exodus' (from The Untutored Townsman's Invasion of the Country, 1946.