“A hand that will always try to please every customer” advert

A reminder of the days of urban farms and dairies. A 1912 advert in Wimbledon. Official Guide 1912 for Manley’s Model Dairy who appear to have been based on Revelstoke Road in the growing suburbs and on a farm, Wimbledon Park Farm or Ashen Grove Farm, that may have been largely subsumed into Wimbledon Park.

Even by 1912 the ‘big’ regional and national dairy chains, who supplied milk in bulk to such urban areas, were winning out so it is interesting to see an example of a diary that obviously still kept its own cows and was billed as a cowkeeper and dairyman. Manley’s still appear in official records in 1924/25 so appear to have survived WW1. The whole area, including the wider Wimbledon Park area, is an example of the encroachment of housing on what had been a major estate sold for development and here the local Council, in the early years of the twentieth century, stepped in to try and limit development, the loss and preservation of open space.

The advert takes the form of a ‘hand’ as mentioned in the text, ‘holding’ a view of the farm and a milk cart. Text inside the ribbon and the scroll is hand-lettered. The two lines in red are typographic, and feature two typefaces from Stephenson Blake’s library: Windsor Condensed and Flemish Expanded. The bold caps for “The only cowkeeper” are from a slab serif that’s not identified yet.