SEASONED hardwood
village
finger post signs
These classic, first-generation, seasoned hardwood black and white painted, English finger-post signs belong to the old 1950s England of Sir John Betjeman and blend in so well with the beautiful British countryside.
We hand-craft these signs from carefully selected oak and sustainable tropical hardwood and attached the hardwood signs with oak ships dowels to make an excellent fixing.
We paint these finger-post signs in a deep base Sadolin air-breathing paint system. Furthermore, we use the old aluminium finger-post letters, which are indestructible and will last forever. Our finger-post signs are installed into a prepared granite chippings foundation to provide excellent vertical stability and perfect water drainage.
These classic black and white finger post signs look absolutely stunning in any rural location and accentuate the beauty and charm of any historic village. When selected a traditional seasoned hardwood finger-post sign the biggest mistake that one could do is to accept the signs being fitted with the plastic resin letters, numbers and fraction plates these have been a disaster ever since they were first introduced back in the 1970's as from a maintenance point of view one will never stop at having to keep on replacing them. We stopped using these rather tacky looking letters back in the 1980s as the common problem being that they fractured on the signs due to becoming brittle with exposure to the Sun UV Rays as well as frost. They never painted well when the signs were being refurbished and due to the very small gap between the fixing holes and the edge of the letter ended up falling off the signs due to not being capable of expanding and contracting with the constant movement of the timber signs . This is why we now use our own hand made sand blasted aluminium letters which are indestructible, non-corrosive and designed to be used again and again for hundreds of years. These vintage sign aluminium letters are all uniform drilled countersunk and painted with the Military Grade BAE Systems Aerospace Etching Primer and the top coated with an industrial black gloss exterior paint to provide a very attractive and permanent finger-post sign lettering. We fit these to our hardwood signs with black stainless steal screws which really blend in perfectly to provide a First Class classic finish. We are always supplying these letters to conservation groups and steam railway stations who wish to maintain an authentic period look to their signs where plastic resin letters would really lower the tone of the period charm. It saddens me to see that the vast majority of the traditional finger-post signs in Rural Counties like East Sussex are still using these awful plastic/resin letters which are costing a fortune to keep on replacing with more of the same. Even some of the Dorset Villages have chosen plastic over aluminium and are now really regretting doing this as it has made these signs look rather cheap and nasty. There should be some grown up thinking about the use of single plastic/resin lettering for signs as they simply are not fit for purpose for exterior use and look embarrassingly bad when used on period signs.
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Castle Combe is considered to be the finest Village in England so only the very best Wiltshire seasoned hardwood vintage finger-post sign was good enough to use in such a stunning location. Our bespoke signs stands just to the South of the High Street in this picture postcard famous filmset location. No plastic lettering permitted here as this vintage Wiltshire finger-post sign had to be the real thing made to feet and inches complete with the original black aluminium letters in the old typeface of the 1920's.
Just step aboard this lovely old vintage bus that was filmed back in 1971 and drive through the beautiful unspoiled English Countryside and look at just how pleasant it still was with so many of its vintage signs and red K6 Telephone and pillar boxes still in place. One notices the obvious absence of vulgar modern housing estates creeping into every available open space within the rural community.
This is when we still had strict local planning restrictions in place for our
Precious Green Belt.
Even as late as 1967 we could still have done a great deal more to save thousands of our precious rural vintage black & white finger post signs and period cast metal village nameplates & street nameplates.
The shocking reality was that we replaced them all with rubbish not fit for purpose modern metric signs that were designed to be replaced every
10 years. Shame on the people who were running Our Ministry of Transport at the time.
I took the photo below of this stunning Vintage MG Sports Car just a few bends down the lane from this traditional black and white painted finger-post sign show above that we had just installed the week before. Clearly they go together like Strawberries & Cream as they belong to the same Golden Age that at Finger-Post signs are working so hard to recreate.
All of Our Bespoke Hand-Crafted Signs Are Massively Over Engineered And Made To Their Original Feet & Inches. They Are held In Position By Heavy Duty Precision Made Oak Dowels With Their Signs Displaying Not The Usual Cheap & Tacky Plastic Resin Letters That Start Breaking Off From Day One But Permanent & Attractive Black Aluminium Lettering That Will Still Be Reusable In a Century From Now.
Our Repaired Refurbished and Upgraded East Sussex Finger Post Sign
We have just completed the refurbishment of this old East Sussex Finger Post Sign that needed some of our indestructible and permanent aluminium letters and numbers as well as removing from the very damaging damp and sticky Wealden Clay and then we re-installed it into a granite chippings drainage foundation that will dramatically extend the life of this sign.
We also applied six coats of a very expensive air-breathing paint after sanding this sign right back to the bare wood and then using tow part resin fillers to conceal every possible imperfection. Hundreds of man hours go into making these old signs look this good. This is why one should not allow any Bodge & Leg It Contractors anywhere near them using their cheap plastic resin letters and not fit for purpose materials that ever break off, rust or just rot away. We refurbish these period East & West Sussex Finger Post Sings at our workshop and then return them looking like this example. We also build them from scratch in seasoned hardwood complete with the permanent aluminium letters & numbers plus cast metal fractions.
These Charming Traditional Old East & West Sussex Black & White Painted Finger-Post Signs
blend in with both the period architecture & the beautiful countryside like a match made in Heaven.
The charming and idyllic English Countryside was perfectly captured in colour back in 1968 and brought to our first generation colour TV sets with The Avengers TV Series. We can now see Major John Steed & Mrs Emma Peel driving around once again along miles of unspoiled country lanes and through picture postcard sleepy old villages with the return of this very popular long running TV Series that upon its release by ABC Television captured the imagination of a Worldwide Audience.
Any Year Before 1964 Would Do For A Start
This moving photo below of of our adorable Queen Elizabeth II & our young King Charles III clearly shows that we both liked the same wonderful toy cars back in the golden age when we never had it so good.
