Woman restores 'ghost sign' on her terraced house

Bronwyn North, 21, has been painting the sign back on her house wall since early October

A woman who has restored a "ghost sign" on the side of her Victorian terraced house said she wanted to bring an "iconic" local landmark back to life.

Bronwyn North, 21, said that after buying the property in the Sheffield suburb of Sharrow Vale earlier this year, she noticed the faded wording of an advert for a business on an outer wall.

The lettering spelled out the details of slate merchants and tilers Staniforth & Lee, who had premises in the city centre in the early 20th Century.

The paint had been peeling for decades before bar worker Miss North and her sister Beatrice painstakingly recreated the original wording.

"When people ask me why I did this, I say because the sign is iconic," she said.

She was able to access the highest part of the sign because the roofers she had hired to renovate her home on Neill Road erected scaffolding that she could use.

By coincidence, one of the services provided by Staniforth & Lee when the business still traded was property repairs.

Miss North added: "The scaffolding was only supposed to be there three days but in the end it was three weeks.

"We wouldn't have been able to get that high to repaint the sign otherwise."

The eight-line sign stretches to the top of the house and a broadband company had to relocate a new maintenance box in front to several metres down the street

She researched the sign's deterioration over the years by looking at old Google Streetview images, and also found an old photo on a local history website.

She and her sister repainted 200 characters and eight lines of text to reveal the advert. The work took them six weeks.

Miss North added that she had no experience of signwriting, did not watch any online tutorials and had not completed an art project since she did her GCSEs.

Each letter was chalked back in before being painted in black masonry paint and then two coats of white. Sage green highlights were the finishing touch to make the words stand out.

The original Staniforth & Lee advert was done with lead paint, which has been banned in the UK since 1992

The original paint used contained lead, which has been banned since 1992 but which contributed to the Neill Road example being so well-preserved.

Staniforth & Lee appeared in local trade directories in both 1905 and 1925 at the Holly Lane offices referenced on the wall of Miss North's house, but then seem to have gone out of business.

She added: "If someone offered me the right amount of payment to do one for them, I'd definitely think about it!"

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