London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – National Army Museum (Hellfire Corner Sign)

The National Army Museum is very proud of having this item in its collections, it’s an original wooden sign that was in a dangerous location at a junction on the Menin Road leading from Menin to Ypres. Many soldiers would have gone by the sign during the First World War, but the area was under near constant attack by German soldiers whose nearby defences meant that they had good visibility and it became a very dangerous stretch of road.

There’s a stone marker at the site now, an otherwise innocuous roundabout on the outskirts of Ypres. The marker is one of a series which show the furthest point that the German troops were able to reach.

The sign was brought back from Belgium by William Storie (above) and he used it as a promotional device to encourage sales at his shop in Edinburgh. The above photo was taken in March 1920, with the sign being seemingly nearly undamaged since then, although it seems to have spent much of its life in a storeroom before being donated to the National Army Museum in 1996.

There’s an interesting video above which shows Hellfire Corner (i) during the First World War, (ii) before the roundabout was constructed and (iii) how it looks now. It’s possible to see an earlier Hellfire Corner sign in the video, but the National Army Museum believes the one on display is the final one from that location.