Just 13 years from starting his business as a mere daily parcels carrier to Abingdon, here is James Archer operating a world-wide removals operation, using the very latest technology and systems.
The typewritten caption to the page in the scrapbook reads: “ONE OF OUR EARLY ADVERTISEMENTS - ABOUT 1870 - 50 of these, framed or glazed, were posted at suitable sites in our city and district”. And there is added in manuscript: “Rent 1/- per ann” (I can’t read the units confidently. Would the rent be one shilling (“1/-“) per annum, for such a thing? I’m not sure. It depends how big it was. Perhaps the sample is full size.
This is perhaps just one example of James Archer’s flair for business-advertising, I always remember with affection the prominent advertisement board, basically white, as I remember it, which was always there beside the ex-GWR railway line on the approach to Oxford from the south (ie from London), on the west side of a northbound “Down” train about half-a-mile from the station, in an open agricultural field, saying “Archer Cowley for Removals” (or roughly that), which would be seen by ALL standing passengeres in the corridor of down trains approaching Oxford. It was a very reassuring sight to me, savouring of the security and safety of my father’s own business-operations and reputation. Click here to go to a map showing the location of this advertisement.