SIGNS IN LOMBARD STREET

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 46, 1 September 1928, Page 26

SIGNS IN LOMBARD STREET

EELICS OF PAST CENTURIES. The Golden Grasshopper, the sigu of Martins Bank, has been removed from Lombard street, London, after 430 years. The bank has been transferred to a temporary building in Abehurch lane, and the grasshopper one of the last of the famous Lombard street signs, has gone with it. From some of the modern buildings in the Lombard street of to-day hang the signs of oldtimo banking firms, the black spreadeagle, outside Barclays Bank, the White Earn, outside No. 58, the Cat and Fiddle, outside the Bank of Scotland, and the Stone Anchor outsido No. G7, but they are not the original symbols. Thoy do/however (says "The Times"), recall the days when the goldsmiths of Lombard street carried on a banker's business as a sideline behind the signs swaying over their doors and shop fronts. "Every house in Lombard street had its own sign until about the eighteenth century," said-an authority. "They projected into the roadway, and hung from posts outsido the shops to show the trade of their occupants. Some of them were so heavy and bulky that they pulled over the entire shop-front, and accidents of that kind were not infrequent, so that the signs were taken down, and by 1769 all of them were either abolished or fixed on the flat front of the houso."