Ship shape

Royal Albert, Crystal Place/Upper Norwood

One would guess that the pub is named after HMS Royal Albert, which was launched from Woolwich Dockyard in 1854 – the same year that the Crystal Palace was relocated from Hyde Park to nearby Sydenham Hill. Associations with the Prince Consort were doubtless a good thing in the area at the time.

 

This particular sign takes as its visual inspiration* an engraving by J.W. Carmichael called Homeward Bound, which appeared in the London Illustrated News in 1857. It’s a nice illustration, but it can’t be the ship in question because it appears to have only two gun decks, whereas the Royal Albert had three. This, it would seem, was known to the anonymous sign painter, who accordingly introduced a third gun deck into his picture. If only all signs could be researched so thoroughly…

* Note: not merely copied/nicked – and yes Greene King, I’m looking at you.

Pigs (Three Different Ones)

Flying Pig, Hills Road, Cambridge

Having been known as the Crown for most of its life (apart from one brief period when it was renamed the Engineer, presumably to attract custom from the workers at the nearby railway station), this 1830s-ish pub was renamed the Flying Pig in the late 1980s by the then proprietor – and amateur pilot – Mick the Pig.

Naturally a new name means new signage, which included this distinctive signboard.

By 2010, however, it was becoming rather weather-beaten and was in danger of becoming the ‘Fallen on Some Poor Soul’s Head Pig’, so it was removed and eventually, in April 2011, replaced by this eye-catching double-sided job, the work of Mr Penfold:

Here beer here? Hear, hear!

(Update: Well, wouldn't you just know it: as soon as I finally get round to blogging about this sign, it gets taken down because it's too heavy for the bracket. Replacement sign in due course: watch this space (or another one).)

Inside only, no standing on top

Tram Depot, Dover Street, Cambridge 

Back in the late 1980s, Suffolk brewery Earl Soham took over the derelict stable block of the long-defunct Cambridge Street Tramways depot, renovated it, and turned it into a pub. What an excellent way of giving new life to neglected part of Cambridge’s heritage! (In these less enlightened times a quarter of a century later the site would probably be cleared and a monstrously insensitive and incongruous seven-storey office block would spring up in its place.) Although sadly no longer an Earl Soham house (it was taken over a few years later by Everards), the pub still has an attractive sign, appropriately featuring a horse-drawn tram, whose design has survived at least one replacement.

Tram Depot: previous sign

Tram Depot: current (2014) sign

Attractive, distinctive, eye-catching and appropriate to the building – an approach that a certain other brewer could learn from.

But. (Yes, there’s always a ‘but’.)

Is it a Cambridge tram?

Well, unfortunately, no, it isn’t. There are several clues, not least the leafy rural setting, which bears no resemblance to any part of the actual tramway. This I can put down to artistic licence and not think too much more about it, but some other inaccuracies are less easy to brush aside:

• Cambridge Street Tramways livery was red and cream, not this sort of coffee-and-cream affair.
• The tram car depicted here is being drawn by two horses. This was true of the competing omnibuses of the time, but aside from a brief experiment in the late 1880s, in response to widespread concerns about the welfare of the horses, all CST trams were drawn by a single horse.
• CST tram no. 5 was a single decker.

So, a commendable effort in the true spirit of what a painted pub sign should be like, but as is so often the case, the execution is let down by an absence of research.

References

Paul Carter, Cambridge 1. The Prestige Series. Glossop: Venture Publications, 2004.
Leslie Oppitz, Tramways Remembered: East Anglia, East Midlands and Lincolnshire. Newbury: Countryside Books, 1992.

S. L. Swingle, The Cambridge Street Tramways. Locomotion Papers No. 61. Lingfield: Oakwood Press, 1972.