Tag Archives: directions

A poorly placed direction signpost

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I FIRST BECAME AWARE of fingerposts when I was in Ootacamund (‘Ooty’) in South India in 1994. One of the places in the spread out town is called Fingerpost because there is a fingerpost in the centre of the so named district.


Where we are staying in Cornwall this October (2022) there is a finger post at a T-junction where one road meets another slightly larger one. The fingerpost at this junction ought to have three arms, one pointing along the road that ends here, and two for the larger road. However, the sign has four arms. One of them, pointing to Trewollack and Rosenannon appears to point where there is no road but the entrance to a farmer’s field without even a footpath crossing it.


This sign puzzled us for several days. Then, we spotted a small side road located about 100 yards downhill from the sign and the T-junction. This road leads to Trewollack and Rosenannon, but has no sign indicating this near where the lane begins. The four armed fingerpost is supposed to direct travellers along this road but is nowhere near enough to it to be helpful.

A foreign wind

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THERE IS A HOUSE in Hampstead’s Downshire Hill, where John Heartfield (1891-1968) lived between 1938 and 1943. Born in Germany as Helmut Herzfeld, he was an artist who employed art, and in particular photomontage, as a political weapon. He was anti-Nazi and fled Germany in 1933, arriving in England in 1938, having spent some time in Czechoslovakia. Nearby, are houses where three other artistic creators lived: Roland Penrose and his wife Lee Miller; and the creator of The Muppets, Jim Henson.

Heartfield’s home on Downshire Hill has a peculiar feature, which might have been added long after he lived there. It is a weathervane. That is not a particularly unusual embellishment, but on closer examination, it is not a run-of-the-mill British weathervane. Weathervanes in England often have the four points of the compass abbreviated as NSEW, that is, north, south, east, and west. The one on Heartfield’s former home has the letters NSOE. At first, I thought that the O was an abbreviation for the German for east, ‘Ost’. If the weathervane was German, it should have had the letters NSOW. Then, I thought that the O is probably an abbreviation for the Italian for west, ‘ovest’ or for ‘oeste’ the Portuguese and Spanish words for west. This makes sense because the other points of the compass in those languages are abbreviated as: N, S, and E. Short of ringing the doorbell to ask, the linguistic identity of the weathervane will have to remain a mystery to me for the present.

Pillar of salt

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“IN TWO HUNDRED YARDS TURN LEFT on to Shoot Up Hill, and then immediately right onto Mapesbury Road”, commands a disembodied, strangely accented voice in the GPS navigation system. So many people are now using digital routing devices to find their way around that I wonder whether the need for roadside direction signs will disappear sometime in the future. I hope not because although many of these signs are mundane in appearance, some of them are quite distinctive. Recently, I saw one which is a veritable work of art.

 

BLOG PILLAR 3

 

The Pillar of Salt is not only a biblical tale, the fate of Lot’s wife when she looked back at the city of Sodom, but also the name of an unusual road direction sign in the heart of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk (England). I had noticed this curiously designed signpost of Angel Hill in Bury St Edmonds on previous visits, but it was only a few days ago that I examined it carefully. It looks like a short lighthouse with arms projecting from it in three directions. Two of the arms have the names of places and road numbers (e.g. ‘MILDENHALL A1101’). A third arm bears the words ‘NO ENTRY’. The signpost looks distinctive but somewhat surprising in a square where it is surrounded by buildings that are mostly well over one hundred years old. It stands a few feet from the magnificent, massive gothic Abbey Gate, which was rebuilt in the 14th century.

A plaque at the base of the Pillar of Salt reads that it is:

“Considered to be the first internally illuminated traffic sign in this country.”

It was designed by Basil Oliver, the Architect to Bury St Edmund’s Town Council, and erected in 1935. The information on the plaque adds:

“It was granted special approval as it did not conform to regulations”.

The problem was that the sizes of the letters and numbers on the signpost did not conform to official standards. According to the britishlistedbuildings.co.uk website:

“The Town Council went to great lengths to find something worthy of this important location when increased motor traffic made signing essential. Basil Oliver advised on the design and at the time when road signs were being standardised under the 1933 Regulations, this sign is individual and probably unique. It was approved by the Ministry of Transport in June 1935 subject to the letters and road numbers being 5” [inches] high. This was a compromise since the new standard was for letters 4.5” high and numbers 6” high.”

Fortunately, this problem with the characters on the sign were resolved amicably.

Basil Oliver (1882-1948) was born in the Suffolk town of Sudbury a year after his parents had married in Hampstead, London. He attended school in Bury St Edmunds, where according to the website suffolkartists.co.uk he began his study of architecture. He continued his studies at Liverpool University; the Royal Academy School; and at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London. By 1904, he was articled to an architect in London.  The website mentions:

“His best-known building is the Borough Offices, Angel Hill, Bury St Edmund’s, Suffolk (1935–1937), described by Pevsner as ‘Neo-Georgian, tactful, and completely uneventful’…”

In contrast, I feel that his signpost in Bury is anything but ‘uneventful’ and it is not ‘tactful’, as it catches the attention by being almost the only ‘modern’ structure in an otherwise old-world environment.

Oliver lived and worked both in Suffolk and London. He died a bachelor in the town where he was born.

The Pillar of Salt, fascinating as it is, is not the main reason that people visit Bury St Edmunds. Many people come to enjoy the grounds that contain the ruins of The Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, once a significant Benedictine monastery. It was in the abbey church, now in ruins, that the barons of England met in 1214 to agree to force King John to accept the Charter of Liberties. This was the forerunner to the Magna Carta, which was signed by King John at Runnymede in 1215. Within the ruined church there are two plaques commemorating that important gathering of the barons and listing their names.

Thus, Bury St Edmunds was the birthplace of both the Magna Carta and, also, the internally illuminated direction sign, two developments separated by a gap of 720 years. Much of the research for this short essay was done using the same technology that powers the GPS electronic navigation systems. Useful as these gadgets are, give me an old-fashioned direction sign any day.

Directions

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directions

 

I travel a great deal and sometimes get lost. It is then that I might ask a passer-by for directions. Generalising a bit, the kind of answer you get tends to vary from country to country.

During trips to the USA, I have either been told that the person I asked has absolutely no idea at all or I have been given very precise, accurate directions. 

In the UK, if you ask directions from the average person you meet by chance, several things might happen. First of all, you might be given accurate directions. More likely, you will recieve a vaguer reply like:

“I think it’s somewhere in that direction. Follow that road, and then ask again.”

Because most British people want to be helpful, you might be told:

“I think I’ve heard of it. You could try going that way, but I’m not sure.”

But, it is very rare that you will be told:

“I’ve absolutely no idea.”

In India, asking directions can result in a small conference taking place. People within earshot of the person you first asked will join in the discussion. Often each person will point in a different diection in an attempt to be helpful and also to have the chance to meet a stranger. Like the Americans, who will happily admit ignorance of places that do not have any importance in their lives , many Indians also only know how to reach places where they need to be but not others. But, unlike the Americans, Indians do not want to disappoint visitors to their country by not supplying some kind of answer.

Of course, all of the above is highly generalised. But, here is one specific example, which occurred in Istanbul, Turkey. We were looking for some place of interest, but could not find it. We entered a shop. Without having any knowledge of Turkish, we managed to make it clear what we were looking for. Without hesitation, the shop keeper abandoned what he was doing, becckoned us to follow him, and then walked with us through the area until we reached our desired destination.