File:Fount Pens Repaired.jpg

English: 7 August 2018. 7.30 pm and we were still enjoying the long summer evenings. Less enjoyable, that day's peak London temperature of 30ºC. (86º Fahrenheit)

Most businesses were closed along Stoke Newington Church Street N16. Including the Green Room at number 113 which is a florist and café.

Over the years some owners and tenants of buildings have retained "ghost signs" - hand-painted ads of past businesses. Probably through lack of money; or maybe disinterest. Or because traders rent the street-level premises and someone else, perhaps faraway, owns the building.

Now old ads have become fashionable. So it's good business to have these "heritage" features.

Places change of course, and buildings are always in flux. They are containers which are always being adapted, extended and enlarged. They may be repaired and renewed and enlarged by new owners who appreciate them and their neighbourhoods. Or bombed, burned-out, or simply demolished by greedy kindly forward-thinking public-spirited property developers.

To be clear, I'm not advocating jet-washing, or painting over anything older than last week's fashions.

Nor other favoured options like retention of facades to pretend nothing has changed.

Nor another extreme: turning areas into museum-like 'quarters'. Reminders of a vanished, or perhaps imagined past. Local history cleaned-up, prettified and retrofitted to tell a story favoured by local "regeneration" officials; and the corporate interests they serve.

Stoke Newington has many reminders of the long history of the area before it went up-market and gentrified, With house prices which few London families on average salaries can now afford. ______________________________

§ The website Ghostsigns reported on the: Local listing status for Hackney ghostsigns.

§ More ghostsigns in Stoke Newington Church Street. Including photos of traders outside their unquaint shops.