Signs Gallery

View down Montpelier Vale, Blackheath Village, London

A superb postcard view down Montpelier Vale, Blackheath Village, London - the detial is incredible, with individual shops identifiable, the pavements as busy (as they ever are!) and the impressive form of the Victorian schoolhouse on Independence Road, now a Montessori Centre and Private Hospital. Date: circa 1909

© Mary Evans / Grenville Collins Postcard Collection

A couple entering Gretna Green

A couple entering Gretna Green, the Scottish border town where eloping couples go to get married. The village was traditionally popular with eloping English couples because they could be married simply by stating their intention in front of witnesses, usually at the blacksmith's. Scottish marriage laws were tightened in 1856 but the legal age of marriage without parental consent remains lower than in England. Original Publication: Picture Post - 8451 - Gretna Green - unpub. (Photo by Charles Hewitt/Getty Images)

Hong Kong street scene, 1890s

Hong Kong street scene. Pedestrians, carts, rickshaws and signs in both Chinese script and English on a hill street in Hong Kong in the 1890s. At the time, this area was a British colony. This lantern slide, by US explorer and survey photographer William Henry Jackson (1843-1942), was obtained for the World's Transportation Commission, a worldwide survey carried out for the Field Columbian Museum of Chicago, USA. The lantern slides in this collection were hand-coloured with dyes and paints. Here, the areas at far right and left have not been coloured

© LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY