Webinar on Talking Shop: an Introduction to Historic Shopfronts

Speakers: Owain, Katie Carmichael, Hannah.

Owain: Just a couple of seconds to unmute myself. I hope everyone can hear me well enough. Thank you, Hannah, although I’m slightly thrown by the High Sheriff of the High Street, which is a new one on me. There you go. Thanks all and welcome to the second in a series of Historic England webinars, focusing on historic high streets, developed as part of our High Street Heritage Action Zones programme. Last week for those of you lucky enough to call in – and I notice a few familiar names – we provided and introduction to the issue, focusing on why these spaces need our help and why it’s so important that they receive it. We covered the fact that these are hugely important spaces. They bring economic value through providing employment and generating billions for the economy, nationally. Socially, they provide places where all sections of a community can come together and engage with each other, something that is often especially important for people that are new to an area. And culturally, as places of high footfall, they’re also home for cultural assets like libraries, museums and art galleries, and if less people visit our high streets, then these places suffer as well.

And it is that cultural aspect that we are focussing on today because these are spaces that are rich in heritage. Now, that heritage is not always obvious, but I can guarantee that it’s there. Whilst not all high streets have a castle on them – not wishing to show off, but mine does – they often have the evidence of hundreds of years of activity in the buildings and on the streets. One of the objectives of our High Streets Heritage Action Zones programme is to change people’s perception of these places, to highlight that rich heritage and to use it to give these places back their character or their distinctiveness or, to quote the doyen of the high street, Bill Grimsey, their brand. It is that heritage or, more specifically, that of the shopfronts that brings us all here today. Today, Katie will be talking about the history of shopfronts. And following on from that, next week, Clive Fletcher no less will be looking at the repair and reinstatement of shopfronts, building on his experience of projects that have done just that.

The final webinar in this series takes places 25th November, and that will focus on community engagement in high street projects. And I can recommend all of them. This series of webinars has been developed as part of England’s High Street Heritage Action Zones programme, and what this programme sets out to do is bring people back to our high streets, using their heritage, their historic character, to do that. We are working principally in 68 places. It is important to us that the benefits are felt beyond those 68, and this is why these webinars are so important. They are taking the expertise we have developed on place-shaping and the importance of heritage, expertise that is now being developed by work on those 68 high streets, and spreading that learning as widely as possible in the hopes that others find it useful.

And on that note, I think I shall pass over to my colleague Katie Carmichael from our East of England office, to regale you with tales of historic shopfronts.

Katie: Thanks, Owain. Thanks for the introduction, thanks for having me of course and thank you to everyone for coming along today. Just one thing before I start is just to say that the-- Sorry I just lost my ability to move the slides. The chat box has just widened. Oh brilliant, thank you. Just to say that a lot of the detail that I’ll be talking about today, if anybody is particularly keen, is included in a report, which we will share the link to at the end. So, if you’re particularly interested in making a note of materials and styles and things, don’t worry, you don’t have to write everything down, and there is a report available.

Hannah: Katie, Hannah here. Could we just increase your microphone volume just a little bit before we get too far into the slides? So, that’s the drop-down just next to the microphone icon

Katie: Is that better?

Hannah: That’s lovely. Wonderful. Thanks ever so much.

Katie: No problem. OK, so for anybody who’s not familiar with the elements of a shopfront, you essentially have an outer structural framework, which consists of the plasters, often with consoles. They link the fascia and the cornice, and that’s the outer framework. And then within that, you have the actual glazing itself, which is supported by store rises and store boards, with access to the shop normally through a lobby, which is generally recessed, and that obviously gives us access to the doorway.

So medieval shopfronts are, of course, very well known, where they do exist and are clearly significant, but they’re not actually true shopfronts as they are simply windows that are within the framework of the wider building. So, the jettied range that you see here was erected in 1459 and was designed with shops on the ground floor and living accommodation above. And that’s an arrangement that remained popular for centuries.

But shopfronts as we would recognise them only begin to emerge in the mid-18th century. They consist of shop windows with the surrounding framework of plasters, fascia and store [indistinct] risers. And early Georgian shopfronts are characterised by their use of projecting bow windows with heavy or fully moulded glazing bars and small panes of glass. These often projected far into the street and became such a nuisance that acts were passed in the late-18th century to limit their depth. Subsequent acts in many towns in the 19th century set minimum widths for streets and resulted in the removal of a great many of those shopfronts. One of the oldest shopfronts to survive in London is the example scene here, which was installed in around 1756 at number 56 Artillery Lane in Spitalfields, and as you might expect, this one is grade one listed.

Shopfronts increasingly became more refined as time went on. Delicate glazing bars were often characteristic of that, and at the time it was really quite revolutionary and often seen as just a little bit gaudy. So, in 1836 Charles Dickins, who was at that point just a young journalist wrote that ‘Six or eight years ago, the epidemic began, an inordinate love of plate-glass and a passion for gas lights and gilding. The disease gradually progressed and at last attained a fearful height. Quiet, dusty old shops in different parts of the town were pulled down. Spacious premises with [indistinct] fronts and gold letters were erected instead. Rooves supported by massive pillars, doors knocked in to windows, a dozen squares of glass into one, a strong desire to stick the royal arms over the shop door.’ So although we see an example like this, a chemist's shop in Bath, as being very elegant and refined, at the time it wasn’t really seen quite that way. Later Georgian shopfronts are rather more common than the earlier examples, but they are still rare. The raised doorway and use of ionic capitals as seen here in Cambridge is absolutely typical, as is the tablature, rather than the sort of just fascia, and the lack of consoles.

So, early Victorian shopfronts. These are characterised by the slenderness of their plasters, the fascia and the corners, all features which become more prominent over time. Simple restrained details such as stylised Greek key design, reading and simple panelling are typical of the 1840s and 1850s. So, the stylised Greek key design, you should be able to see in that bottom picture on the left, and as I say, that is absolutely typical of what you’d expect to find.

The example here from Lowestoft, although clearly the glazing is a much later replacement, is a fairly typical outer framework of around 1850. So, you’ll notice this rather distinctive fascia design. In the absence of consoles, what they’ve done here is to scoop the ends of the fascia out to form this [scotia?] profile. This is a practice that was very common in the 1830s but did continue right through to the middle of the century, and the restrained mouldings on the plasters here are also consistent with an early Victorian date.

The introduction of increasingly affordable sheet and [indistinct?] glass from the mid-19th century onwards was perhaps the largest single influence on the appearance of shopfronts during the Victorian era. The Italianate style was first used for shopfronts in the 1840s and was characterised by the use of tall, elegant, [arcaded?] windows with arched [heads?] separated by colonnettes and decorative spandrels.

Following the technical advances showcased at the great exhibition of 1851, the style reached its peak in the 1860s before declining in the 1870s, following the introduction of transom lights due to gaslighting and the associated need for greater ventilation. In the 1850s and ‘60s windowpanes tended to be up to 7–8 feet in height and perhaps 3–4 feet wide, but no larger. We will discuss chemist's shops as a particular shop type a little bit later, but the delicate design you see here in Lowestoft is an almost textbook example of the type and period.

Shopfronts of the later 19th century feel very familiar to us all. And they are characterised by deeper angled fascias, moulded cornices, elaborate brackets, deep brackets [indistinct] hollow glazing bars, integral roller blinds, increasingly splayed lobbies and brilliant cut and gilded shopfronts. Advertising and lettering on store risers, store boards, the glazing itself, the fascias, hanging signs, the body of the building were once absolutely the norm. So, James Smith and Sons seen here in Bloomsbury is the rare surviving example of a shopfront from around 1880, complete with all its lettering, which really demonstrates how every available surface was utilised for advertising purposes. You’ll see that here the shopfront itself is also topped by decorative, Gothic-style iron cresting, which is another feature of the late Victorian period. Very heavy and elaborate consoles are really typical from around 1870 but fell out of fashion within really just a few decades. So, as early as 1907, they were criticised as the result of a purposeless exaggeration and the aggressively the ugly and the unnecessarily prominent features of a disturbed and reasonless street architecture, which is a little bit harsh.

Stone was an increasingly popular material for shopfronts and was seen as providing a suitably permanent air of confidence. It’s a big investment and a lot of skill to create a shopfront entirely from stone. Two-storey shopfronts also became popular in larger towns and cities often situated along bus routes, where they could be seen to best advantage, and this was really spurred on by the increase in popularity of cast iron following the great exhibition, and many of these are incredibly grand as you can see here at Halsbury’s in London. But rather more modest examples can still be found. So, known as Crystal House in Norwich, this is a much more utilitarian example of a two-storey showroom and warehouse. Built in 1868, the narrow panes are separated by slender metal glazing bars, with very delicate shaped spandrels and also the use of cast-iron columns. Note the Italianate rusticated banding of the period, as well as the deep-squared lobby, simple fascia and cornice, which are much more in keeping with simpler early Victorian shopfronts than the grander designs of the 1870s onwards.

Around the turn of the century, however, much plainer shopfronts became common as towns continued to expand rapidly. Here we see an almost fully intact example of a shopfront designed in 1880, designed for a stationer. The large plate-glass windows, moulded plaster and splayed lobby entrance differentiate it from otherwise visually similar early Victorian designs. And once you notice this style, you really do spot it everywhere that you look. So again, note the widely splayed lobby, whereas early examples are shallow and square. And as I say, the splay increases in depth and width as the century progresses.

So, if late Victorian designs were criticised for being backwards looking and overly heavy, the shopfronts of the Edwardian period are much more delicate and varied. Typical features include brass fittings on the doors and the windows, tall plate-glass windows on slender colonettes, carved spandrels and curved-glass returns. You get elaborate transom lights, often with bullseye or stained glass. You get the use of mahogany and other exotic hardwoods. The lobbies are increasingly deep, and in larger examples you get island showcases and often the name of the business set within a mosaic floor. The soffits, which are the ceilings of the lobbies were also increasingly decorated themselves, and if you’re lucky, you get flowing plant forms, which are influenced by the art nouveau.

Now, clearly an exceptional example, the former Boots flagship store in Nottingham was upgraded to grade 2* in 2018 as part of the Heritage Action Zone in Nottingham. As I say, it really displays all of the examples of hardwood, the flowing forms, the mirrored soffit in the ceiling. It’s really very stunning. But rather more typical examples across the country still display many of these elements but on a rather more modest scale and budget. So, here you see again this continuation with the use of stained glass [leaded?] transom lights, the curving woodwork, delicate colonettes and the use of curved glass. Many shopfronts across the country were designed by a number of large firms. One of the most famous is the London firm of Frederick Sage and Co.

When cast-iron details and frames gave way to bronze in the 1920s. Sage’s interwar shopfronts really embraced that and are entirely characterised by their use of bronze capitals in new classical details. Unfortunately, very rarely did they actually contain the maker’s mark, but they are always of high quality and are worth looking out for. Interwar shopfronts are largely split into two camps. Many continue to use materials and styles which were not unfamiliar in the Edwardian period, but you get the addition of deep lobbies which form arcaded entrances, the use of marble, mosaic and terrazzo lobby floors and increasingly the use of bronze details, which are often geometric as with this ventilation grill in a store riser. Unfortunately, they can be very similar visually to earlier designs, so really what you’re looking for in this case is the use of the much heavier mouldings than you would see in an Edwardian example. And that’s often stylistically the only thing that will be able to give the actual date.

Conversely, of course, some shopfronts of interwar years really embraced the avant-garde and the very modern designs, which embraced the use of smooth and polished materials, such as vitrolite, granite, marble, [indistinct] and chrome. Fox’s shopfront of 1937 is one of the finest examples of this new style. These are chrome, black vitrolite, neon lettering and concave non-reflective glass, which was designed by Pollard’s to eliminate reflections that might affect the visibility of displays, but that was very expensive and there were very few made and only a handful survive today. So, this example here is listed at grade 2.

Another shopfront by Pollard’s is this art-deco-style design, with geometric details and French-influenced projecting showcase windows. It forms part of the ground floor of the Strand Palace Hotel, which was built in 1909 but refurbished in art-deco style in the 1930s. Showcase windows like this are very strongly associated with clothing stores and do survive in use well into the post-war period. If anybody is looking for more information, then there are many articles, books and technical notes available online if anyone’s interested, and that is particularly true for the interwar period itself.

The post-war period saw a continued move away from traditional shopfronts towards simpler designs, which made full use of modern materials, and you get a general trend towards simplicity and flexibility of use. So, common features include the use of small mosaic tiles, often in blues and greys, asymmetric splayed entrances, which are designed to literally funnel window shoppers towards the door. You get deep squared lobbies for larger stores and very boxy display cases, picture windows with a horizontal emphasis and a projecting frame, or the use of [indistinct] and paving and fascias which have narrow vertical mahogany slats upon which lettering is fixed.

So, two small examples here. 1950s jewellers on the left, where you’ll note that you have different materials used on the two display cases, so a lighter material for the feminine female displays and the much heavier dark materials for the male displays. And you also have the classic lettering of the period, and then on the right-hand side you have the recently listed bakery in Nottingham, again part of that Heritage Action Zone. This is more unusual for the time in its use of chrome and curved glass, as well as cursive lettering, but you’ll note the typical small mosaic tiles, and one thing to note with the curving glass here is that curving glass survived in use for longer in confectionary and cake stores as it was very popular for displaying cakes.

So, one example of a listed post-war shop is the former David Greig store in Canterbury. It was built for a chain of grocery stores and was designed by Robert Payne and Partners in 1954, and it was quite well known and celebrated at the time and clearly continues to be so. But most post-war shops are characteristically plain, with those asymmetrically splayed lobbies, often where the emphasis is placed on goods themselves, which are displayed inside horizontal windows. The framework of the shop itself is generally a rather more subsidiary design, often covered in small or mosaic tiles, and although currently unremarkable, such complete examples of post-war shops are increasingly rare. Examples such as this, with its upright slatted fascia, classic lettering and small mosaic tiles are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The 1970s marked another turning point for shopfront design, with the introduction of warm-air curtains which allowed for wide, open entrances in larger stores, aluminium frames and doors, the emissions of lobbies and smaller shops and a focus increasingly on function and economy.

The 1980s onwards has seen either the introduction of ultra-modern shopfronts or the traditional [timber?] shopfronts. In a well-meaning but often flawed result of nostalgia and conservation lobby and rather poorly considered shopfront design guides, which don’t always properly consider proportions and materials. Softwood is also often stained to resemble oak or mahogany and rather simplistic designs with chunky machine-made mouldings that are attached to rather than an integral part of frames are rather common. This results in an uncomfortable mixture of styles and only dominant signage, which is not only often short lived and dishonest but would very rarely fool anyone. But I did come across this advert for aluminium traditional shopfronts from 1987, and these do look rather more convincing from their illustrations. That’s definitely something that I’m on the lookout for if anybody sees any examples. The pastiche designs are, of course, nothing new. At first glance here, the [indistinct] and gilded fascia, the splayed lobby, it all looks fairly convincing for a late Victorian design, but if you look closer, the windows have these very chunky unmoulded frames rather than colonettes. There are slightly strange brackets dividing hammer-to-glass transom lights. The fascia lacks any consoles. There’s no cornice or blind box. It does look rather unfinished. And when we looked into this further for Lowestoft, we discovered that these [indistinct] supply stores only opened on this site in 1934. So, many styles, features and materials do remain popular for a long time, and shopfronts are notoriously difficult to date just from their style alone.

So, the chemists in Lowestoft that I showed earlier was turned down for listing a number of years ago based on the photos that had been supplied, which was a decision that we entirely supported because we just were not able to see all the finer details that indicated its true date until we were able to visit as part of our HAZ work. One thing to note as well that just adds to confusion is that shopfronts can be older than the buildings that they are on. It wasn’t uncommon for shopfronts to be sold as an entire set piece if a business closed and for that shopfront to be moved to a new building.

So, when you are looking at shopfronts and trying to date them or are just looking for signs of significance, so much comes down to detail. Windows are obviously a very large part of shopfronts and often contained unusual features or clues, such as the use of innovative non-reflective glass, traces of unusual blinds or features such as aquaria, which were most often used in children’s shoe shops, that you may not expect to come across. In older shops, close examination may reveal disused roller shutters, which are often given away by the presence of shutter grooves as on the left, or even lifting shutter mechanisms as seen on the right. These are features that have long been out of use but of course could potentially be brought back provide and extra level of interest to the shop front. Certain classes of shops had very specific requirements and styles, which were not necessarily adopted by other retailers. These were less susceptible to changing fashions and are more readily distinctive from other trades.

So, stores which sold fresh produce first made use of wide double-hung sash windows in the mid-18th century, but they continued with that arrangement until new regulations in the 1950s brought the practice to an end. The lower sash was normally fitted with large brass handles and was pushed up behind the upper sash to create an open shop front in which produce could be displayed, with sales made through the window. Marble slabs helped to keep produce cool, and a veneer of marble, tile or polished granite on the store riser below made it easier to clean. Glazed tiles often featuring cows, sheep or pigs are usually the first and biggest clue that a shop once belonged to a butcher. In addition to tiles, some butchers decorated their shops with the release of animal heads, usually bulls’ heads. These were often made of glazed terra cotta, and butchers would also hang carcasses and [drapes?] of meat on rails inside the shops but also use them to create window displays. In older butchers’ shops the rails are of iron or brass, but by the 1920s steel was the preferred material. Another feature found internally might be a booth or a kiosk of payments, which would have been constructed from wood with glass windows, where a dedicated cashier could settle the accounts. This is a practice that fell out of favour after World War Two and therefore a lot of those kiosks were demolished.

Late 19th-century grocers and provision merchants also made use of hygienic glazed bricks to cover store risers and plasters, typically in ox-blood red or dark green. But they also had standard plate-glass windows unless one side of the shop sold dairy and the other dried goods, in which case the shop might have one sash window for the dairy and a fixed window for the side that sold the dried goods.

Lipton’s had 500 shops by 1919 and were a familiar site across the country, and although many of their older stores were modernised by the company in the 1930s, a good, preserved shopfront survived in Chesterfield, which dates from around 1910. It contains both the shop front and the interior with a long-tiled counter complete with marble slabs for retailed produce such as bacon, eggs, ham, cheese and butter. Other grocery chains used very similar divides, including the international tea stores, which you can see an example of on the bottom right here. You might just be able to make out the words [indistinct] Tea in the ventilation grill, and that’s the brand name for the company’s own tea blend, a very helpful indication as to the shop front.

The Maypole Dairy Company in the top right had some of the most elaborate shopfronts for any grocer. They employed top shop fitters such as Harris and Sheldon and Parnell and Sons. Chemists in the Georgian period used small windowpanes to frame individual jars or bottles, which sat on narrow shelves hidden by the horizontal graving bars. As windows became larger in the 19th century, this practice persisted. The several shelves became one broader shelf, which displayed carboys filled with coloured liquid. That led to a maximum effect and consequently this shelf became known as the carboy shelf. The facing edges of carboy shelves were officially disguised by a lettered strip on the shopfront often with a gilded background and letters picked out in black. This style of shopfront survived relatively unchanged until the post-war period, when a typical but far less distinctive design of metal-framed plate-glass windows set within a marbled or tiled surround began to emerge.

Jewellers, of course, emerged as a distinct shop type following the introduction of arcaded plate-glass shopfronts in the 1850s and 1860s, and by the end of the century, it was common to find ornate hardwood shopfronts with well-lit, arch-headed windows, the products brought up to eye level and decorative glass and deep arcaded lobbies, which allowed for greater display space. Many jewellers also advertised their presence by fixing a clock with their own design above the shopfront, which projected out into the street.

Shoe shops are the last example here. They display a very deep display lobby and free-standing island showcases, which were particularly popular between around 1900 and 1939, and these allowed again small items to be more easily perused by window shoppers. From the 1950s onward, arcade fronts on shoe shops were replaced by wide, deep lobbies with open-back windows, which allowed shoppers to see through to the shop beyond. And that really sort of sums up this history of the use and the way in which shops welcomed people. Earlier shops, you weren’t really encouraged to browse. You could look at things that were on display in the window, but they wouldn’t have a price. And if you went in, the price would vary according to how good a relationship you had with that shop owner. And basically, if you went in, you were expected to purchase. And it was only really following the introduction of department stores in the late 19th century and early 20th century that smaller shops had to change their way of welcoming customers more. And you start to see this emphasis on browsing, which just doesn’t exist in earlier shopfront signs, and I just think that’s a really interesting social aspect to shops, which perhaps we don’t always consider.

So, I’m afraid it is a rather rapid run-through of a few hundred years of design. You’ll see that I’ve not even really covered interiors, arcades, department stores. They’re all huge areas of work in their own right, and they’re all absolutely fascinating. But for the basic introduction to the various materials and styles seen, I hope that’s been useful

Hannah: Katie, that was absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much. I’m sure I’m not alone in having seen many of those styles but perhaps not realised the meaning behind them and how they might have been used to attract the customer in the past. That’s absolutely brilliant. Thank you.

There was so much there that I am sure that there must be a few questions from our delegates here today. Is there anybody who has a question they’d like to put forward. Either you can post it in the chat, or I hopefully am just popping into the middle a little box for you to type questions in. Let me see if that’s worked for you. I’ll give you all a few moments to start typing those questions out. There’s so much in there, Katie. It’s so interesting. I love the idea of the use of stone to give confidence to the customer that you were a permanent presence on the high street. I thought that was absolutely fascinating. I’m concerned that no one can hear me now. Have I still got you all?

Katie: I can hear you.

Hannah: Thanks, Katie. I’ll just let everyone put those questions together. Oh, thank you so much for putting your hands up. I really appreciate it. It’s always difficult doing this from home isn’t it, feeling alone but with so many people. Thanks guys. Katie, I was wondering if you had any thoughts, in looking back so much, what the future trends of the high street might be. I know that’s a bit unfair. That’s not really our remit, but it must have crossed your mind a bit.

Katie: Well, yeah, funnily actually, I’ve been talking to some of our conservation team where we’ve been having some queries from some of the High Streets Heritage Action Zones, and one of the things that really sprang to mind particularly during this situation is the potential for shop awnings and canopies to be brought back into use. They were such an integral part of shopfront designs for such a long time, and they served a really important function. They can reduce the amount of heat going into a building by up to 70%, and they tended to be situated-- so basically you tend to get butcher’s on different sides of the street depending on where you’ve got the most shade. And those awnings, if they’re brought back into use, can provide shelter for visitors and shoppers alike, as well as be a very beautiful way of advertising. And it’s just something that seems to have slowly disappeared from use, and nobody’s quite sure why, but it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to bring them back into use. So that might be something that we’d be able to explore a bit further.

Hannah: That’s really interesting. I'm sure there'll be many other thoughts. We’ve got some fantastic questions coming through, Katie, so I’m just going to take on a few of these. So, I’ve got a specific one that you might be able to answer straight off, Katie: Can you clarify the date range of curved-glass doorway reveals?

Katie: Yeah, the curved glass really appears from probably around 1905 onwards, definitely 1910, and that’s very popular through to the end of the 1930s.

Hannah: Fantastic. So, fairly small window. Brilliant. I’m getting some lovely comments about where to visit. I've got one here: Are there any thoughts on overriding colour schemes from eras of shops? I noticed you mentioned blue and grey for one period. Are there any other noticeable colour schemes?

Katie: Yeah, chemist’s shops are very characteristically black with gold, and in most of the Victorian into early Edwardian periods, the colours are-- we might think of them as being a little bit drab. They are natural-based colours, and they had an emphasis on practicality and not showing up all the grime, so dark greens, dark browns, maroons are very popular. It’s only a little bit later that you start to get stone colours coming in, because that is obviously a lot harder to keep clean.

Katie: So basically, rather dull, slightly vegetal colours are the most popular early on, unfortunately, which is perhaps not what people want to see, but done well it can still be stunning, and it’s worth remembering as well that a gloss paint finish at that period was mid-sheen today, so today we get lots of very high-gloss, black, painted shopfronts. That’s actually quite distracting because the light that’s reflected it really disguises the details of the mouldings and actually makes it look really flat and impossible to get a decent photo, which is really annoying.

Hannah: The absolute bane of all architectural investigators I’m sure.

Katie: Yeah.

Hannah: Fantastic. Thank you. I’ve got several people I think effectively asking the same question, which is a really obvious one from your presentation: If we are trying to restore shopfronts, is there a risk that we are losing perhaps ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s shopfronts, which maybe are becoming rarer? And I suppose conversely, if we are restoring or thinking about it, how do we decide what period we’re going to go to?

Katie: Yeah, it is something that really does concern me. I think many of us would say as individuals that we might naturally prefer the look of traditional shopfronts to post-war design in many cases, but that doesn’t mean that the post-war designs weren’t very good at their time and can look very stunning and again, and of course, everything has to be considered in terms of its significance at the correct date. And I personally feel that if you’ve got a really good, or potentially good again 50s/60s shopfront that it’s such a shame to tear that down and replace it with something that is often not very successful, and if the materials are poor and you’re taking good materials down just because it is on a Victorian building, I think it’s something that we really need to consider. Just because fashions change, why do we want everything to look the same? I’ve seen examples where post-war shopfronts have been synthetically restored and they can look absolutely stunning.

Hannah: I completely agree just on a personal note, Katie, absolutely. But I think it probably comes back to something we always say, that all of these decisions need to be looked at on a case-by-case basis, don’t they?

Katie: Definitely.

Hannah: There’s definitely an argument for restoring what’s survived, and in other places there might be an argument for a replacement, but probably case by case. And I’m sure a lot of our High Street HAZ offices will be looking into exactly those sorts of questions in their own areas. There’s quite a lovely question here, which I want to know the answer to as well, which is quite simply Where would you recommend a day’s visit for a variety of shopfronts in one place. Have you got a favourite one, Katie? Where would you go if you wanted to stare at the fronts of shops.

Katie: Bath is probably pretty high up on the list. Obviously, a lot of those early shop fronts have survived very well in Bath and you get quite extensive ranges of shopfronts there, which is absolutely stunning, so I think it’s time I went back to Bath.

Hannah: Lovely. I think we all wish we could go to Bath. Have we got anyone in from Bath in the audience today, perhaps? Lovely, fantastic. Let’s see. We’ve still got lots and lots of questions here, so as long as everybody’s still got time to stay with us, I’ll go through a few more. Again, a nice specific date-related one: When did mosaic floors become common in lobbies and when did they go out of fashion?

Katie: You get them from the sort of later Victorian period onwards. Obviously, the mid- to late-Victorian periods, you get the introduction of the encaustic tiles, which are those tiles where the colour goes the entire way through rather than just being on the top, and those tend to be more geometric designs, so when you get smaller mosaic, that does tend to be more turn of the century onwards, with a real increase either side of the First World War. In terms of when they stopped being popular, it’s an interesting one because I think they’re starting to have a bit of a resurgence and there are certain companies like, I think it’s Sea Salt, who whenever they take over a new shop, if they’re allowed to, do actually put down a brand-new mosaic lobby floor now themselves, and they’ve been doing that for a little while. But you obviously don’t want them ripping up an earlier one to do that, so again case by case. But mosaic floors do tend to be a sort of 1900 to the 1930s.

Hannah: Wonderful. Thank you. And delightfully now, some people are actually posting their favourite high streets to visit...

Katie: Yay.

Hannah:...in the chat, which is absolutely lovely. So, we’ve got a recommendation here for Rugby, and I saw one earlier for Atherstone I think. Apologies for the pronunciation if I’ve got that wrong, people from Warwickshire. Lovely. And Margot here telling us that she was working in Bath and used the World Heritage designation to avoid the use of corporate signage and logos, so that’s a really interesting use of a different form of designation that’s not listing that was used to manage a shopfront, so that’s really interesting. Thank you Margot. Let’s see; what else have we got in the questions section? So, a good one here coming in from Nicholas: How do we improve our ability to identify and protect 20th-century shopfronts. That’s a tricky question, something you’ve started to look at, I’m sure.

Katie: Yeah, it is something that, I know sort of within my team personally, we’re quite keen to do a bit more work on. Obviously, there is a lot of work that is out there as a whole, but perhaps there could be a role for us to help just gather that together and put it out there. Personally as well, I think there’s something to be done on laundrettes, which are disappearing at an alarming rate and are very much their own little thing themselves, so feel free to spam me with pictures of good signs of laundrettes. It’s strange what we get into.

Yeah, 20th-century shopfronts are an interesting one. It is a very varied period. Obviously, you get earlier ones, and the problem is, if we said 20th century, that includes everything from the beautiful, very early Edwardian designs right through, so it’s a very varied time period, so we’d have to think about how we perhaps divide that up or narrow it down a bit further.

Hannah: Yes, it’s a very big period, isn’t it? I think there’s a few people asking here about sort of where you would go for more general information on shopfronts and shops as well, and I know, Katie, you provided me with these links in advance, which I’m just going to post up now, guys. So, we’ve got a number of good links for you coming from the contents of Katie’s presentation. The whole presentation will of course be available, but a few specific ones we wanted to highlight to you, and I also wanted to mention the Katherine Morrison book on shops and shopping, which is an absolute bible of information on shopping. I’ve been at Historic England a long time, and we always used to refer to it when I was in the listing team. So, that’s the last one listed at the end. My link's gone a bit funny there. I’m just going to do that again just so that you all get to the right places. Hang on. There we go. Brilliant. Popping that in the chat for you all.

Katie: And Dale, the slide show, The Elements of a Shopfront, that’s included in that Lowestoft report that we published, so if anyone’s not familiar with the research reports, and we’ve just put the links on there; they’re all available to download for free as PDFs and contain a lot of this information for you.

Hannah: Perfect, perfect. Wonderful. Well, I know there are perhaps a few questions that we haven’t managed to tackle yet. We’ve got an awful lot here. What we’ll do is if you have a question and you haven’t had it answered yet, we’ve just got a couple more minutes, so do pop it into the chat as well. But if there’s something very niche, you know, an individual-case example, we tend not to deal with individual-case questions on these webinars just because they’re public events, so if we need to get back to you on something specific, we will do so. We have your contact details through the booking process, so if there’s something very specific you need to hear about, do let us know in the Q&A.

I’m also just going to, before we close, I’m going to put in the web links, which are available for each of the webinars themselves; there’s a page for those. If you hover over and then click on it, you’ll get the web link in the box underneath, at our High Street HAZ web pages, there’s a lot of information on there. If you are lucky enough to have a High Street HAZ in your area, if you’re working on one, if you know about one, there’s lots and lots of details there, and then there will be a link to the slides from this specific webinar, coming up. I’m just putting those there for you all so that you can access them and hopefully have just moved the Q&A out the way. There we go.

Right. I’m just going to try and see if I can go through any more questions. Were there any that you noted, Katie? Anything that you sort of wanted to add to your presentation.

Katie: I’m just trying to think now. Just trying to scan through them. So, a lot of the general things are included in a lot of the work that Katherine has done. For anyone who’s not familiar, Katherine Morrison was internal to English Heritage and Historic England until her retirement about a year and a half year ago, and I was lucky enough that she tried to teach me about shops before she left, so Katherine is absolutely still the best person and she's bringing out-- she’s working on a new book actually on chain stores, which people might be interested in whenever that comes out, so look out for that one. But definitely her book is such a good place to start if you’ve got any queries or questions. Her book is likely to be able to answer them.

Hannah: Fantastic. I would certainly second that recommendation. Right, I’ve just had a note that the link I provided for the Lowestoft report isn’t working, so I’m just going to refresh that one again. There we go.

Katie: Oh yeah, it says Nottingham on the end of the link.

Hannah: I think it’s one of those cases of more haste less speed at my end. I’m so sorry, it's me. I think I was trying to put all the links together. So, I’ve just reposted the Lowestoft one, and hopefully that’ll now work. And brilliantly, someone has laundrette photos for you.

Katie: Yay! Feel free to send them to me.

Hannah: Would you like me to post your email address for you?

Katie: Yep, brilliant.

Hannah: Lovely. Fantastic. I shall do that. I’ll tell you what; I’ll also pop up the specific training one as well, which you are also all very welcome to send us information to. I also like to see shopfronts, but I won’t be able to give you any expert commentary on them, which Katie will, so... Lovely. Fantastic.

[They discuss a technical issue with a link which was subsequently solved]

Hannah: Right, fantastic. Well, thank you all again so much. I think a particular thanks to Katie for those fantastic slides. Really, really enjoyable. I can’t believe that anybody didn’t learn something from those, which is absolutely what we hope to achieve from these sessions. Thank you all so much for spending the time with us. It’s great to have people joining us from all over the country and to hear about shopfronts. As you know, this is part of a series. There are two more high street-focused webinars coming up over the next two Wednesdays, so do join us again for those. If you’ve not already booked, you can sign up on our webpages. And I think we will draw things to a close there. Thank you all so much again. Thank you particularly to Katie. Thanks, Katie.

Katie: Thank you.