There’s a chance to buy a London street sign as a batch of old signs no longer needed are put up for auction. The distinctive street signs are all from Westminster, and were first created by Sir Misha Black in 1967, and are still a copyrighted design that needs permission from Westminster Council to reproduce.
There are 235 different road names in the auction, and some of them could be interesting gifts, either for people who share the same name, or who lived on the road and have fond memories of something that happened there.
(c) Catherine Southon Auctioneers & Valuers
The auction is being run by Catherine Southon Auctioneers & Valuers on 18th May 2023 and can be viewed here.
The signs are being sold as the council is replacing them, and the funds from the auction go back to the council.
The full list:
Wow my street is there, wonder when that got replaced?
I looked into the history of some of the signs in this sale, which involves a fiasco over nameplates! https://www.wemadethis.co.uk/blog/2023/04/city-of-westminster-street-nameplate-auction/
The City did/does the same; I successfully bid for one from the 50s about 15 years ago, and finally put it up on my study wall during lockdown (Memo to others; it wasn’t easy – a plastic plate within an iron frame, it weighed, er, a lot. Four plugged screws was expected but that created a lot of mess drilling and actually mounting the thing on my own wasn’t easy!)