 |
| Number 323 Alum Rock Road |
Changing a shop sign can be an act of temporary urban archaeology by peeling away several layers of the recent past. Number 323 Alum Rock Road currently bears witness to everyday life in the 1940s: “tobacconist, confectioner, fancy goods”. The antique italics spell out “H.A. Porter” - Horace Aubrey Porter - whose store was first listed in the 1943 edition of Kelly’s Directory. This annual publication was the Google Maps of the analogue age, which tried to document all the addresses in the city. The listing remained as H.A. Porter for a further twenty-five years until it changed to R.J. Porter in the 1968 edition.
