Having noticed the local pre-Worboys signs gradually vanishing, including some in perfectly good condition, I wrote to Transport for London at info@tfl.gov.uk saying that as they had clearly served their purpose well for the last 45 years maybe it would be a good idea to put preservation orders on some of the remainder so both existing and future generations would be able to experience the past, like the heritage Routemasters. Ken got rid of many as soon as he took office but with Boris's apparent respect for history I hoped the appeal would be given a more sympathetic reception. Obviously the more people who email the better, and for out of London the Department for Transport have a similar email address to contact.

I have just personally spent two weeks covering about 50 pre-Worboys direction signs (including some from the last year) between Herts and Surrey as well as the west side and centre of London, and am now making a photobook of them which without checking am pretty sure is unique. There was the last T junction sign in London off my old road till about 2005 in perfect condition and often thought to take a photo but never did and now realise it was unique. Too late for that but not for many others.

May be of interest to you, but at the Manchester Museum of Transport, we have quite a number of pre-Warboys signs in our collection. If you are interested, I have pictures of most of them in my Flickr gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicholasla ... 162980154/

There are a few more that I haven't photographed, so if I remember to take the camera with me when I'm there this Sunday, I'll try and photograph the remaining examples we have.

There are a couple in Leigh, so I'll try and photo those too at some point.

Thanks Nicholas, I've seen them on my research- it's taken a couple of hours of turning web pages to find each new sign on average so although a few new ones arrive through random chance I suspect I may have seen 98% of the old UK signs online now, although the one on St John Street in Clerkenwell has evaded me since I first found it (although I went there yesterday and there was nothing).
It's a terrible shame though to see so many signs in perfect condition in a museum rather than where they were. The ones at junctions where traffic is slowing down work perfectly well in the old style and should have had the same exemptions as fingerposts, and one point I noted was even in 1963 they wanted to lose our own unique character and copy what was in Europe, for no better reason than some misguided sort of embarrassment at being different. We've never learnt since, look at the Routemaster fiasco.

Hi David,

Nice to see someone else with an interest in pre-Worboys signage. I have a substantial collection of photos on my DRAS site (which seems to be down at the moment - can't even access Myfotopic to complain!). I have an aim of photographing every remaining Pre-Worboys sign in Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset.

Somerset is a bit of a challenge, as they are excellent at maintaining vintage fingerposts, despite some obviously dodgy replacements in the 70's and 80's. But there are still tens, prehaps hundereds of thousands of pre-worboys signs out there if you know where to look. And thankfully councils seem to be making more of an effort now to preserve the remaining ones - they do have heritage about them.

I photographed and plotted on the map a load of them in Ryedale if anyone can find the thread.

I have two favourite types of non-standard local pre-Worboys signs. Do any still exist?

1) In the old North Riding, at junctions of minor rural roads, a conventional fingerpost sign, with a white ring above on which was printed the 6-digit grid reference of the junction.

2) In Lancashire, at the entrance to a town or village, a sign giving the road number you are on above the name of the place.

Found it!

HERE

Gwynedd have employed a specialist firm to re-make some of their fingerposts and village signs (those with distances to the next forward and backward destination).

To add another gift to the basket, there's a display of vintage road signs at Dingles Steam Village in Devon, the link below has additional information about the site but saldy no photographic evidence.

http://www.dinglesteam.co.uk/

The chap who collected them was Stuart Hands, author of a small booklet called Road Signs I picked up yesterday and this is a bitesize summary of how fingerposts and authoritive signs came into existence. A recommended read, although speaking of pre-warboys I couldn't believe the number of classic signs I saw yesterday in Surrey as well.

There used to be a pre-Worboys directional sign mounted on the side of a building on the Market Hill in Woodbridge, Suffolk, although if I remember correctly, last time I visited it had been taken down.

I seem to remember seeing, when visiting South Devon in 1999, a four-arm fingerpost sign on which one pair of opposite arms were in pre-Worboys style, with black capital letters on white background and no border, while the other pair of opposite arms were Worboys "local places" signs, with mixed-case text and blue borders.

Would this count as a pre and post-Worboys setup?

This first three on this page are at the same junction but were removed shortly after these pictures were taken. I wonder if someone is searching the internet for them and then going out stealing them?

It certainly would- although not on-road signs many still related to off-road locations and you have one of each there. I don't think I got a notification for that or I'd have replied weeks ago.

I have one I only found today although the lower sign is a new copy, but looks the job besides not having raised letters.

Yes, I think they're called 'the council'...

I wouldn't call that a copy, just a botched Warboys sign that's a little unnecessary.

Let's see.



The proportions are certainly out, the font and layout are reasonable even to where the three words line up, and the size is hard to compare as I couldn't reach the first one properly up there. I submit my case to the jury, bearing in mind relief lettering will never be able to look the same when made in Letraset.

No, what I meant by "botched" is that the sign is all in capitals (as per recent postings in the Botched Signposts thread), whereas plates beneath signs should be in mixed case lettering.

In addition, such additional plates are not permitted as variants under the Traffic Signs Regulation and General Directions 2002, so that plate should not be there at all.

Ooh- please don't let them know as I quite like it! I know it's totally useless but is something that harks back to my childhood in the 60s and actually in a place I often pass unlike many of the real old ones. Also there is no official sign saying 'No through road' anyway so may as well be hung for a sheep than a lamb.

I found this article in a lcoal newspaper that caught my interest. More interestingly the father who photographed the sign was said to have an unusual hobby. Hmmm... a secret sabristo? Sadly the website doesn't have any pictures but the new signpost is the traditional b/w style with the standard 'imperial ring' on top.

http://www.kentmessenger.co.uk/paper/de ... newspage=7