Devereux wall advert restoration

Plans are afoot to try and sensitively recreate this 100 year old wall advert. It will reflect and celebrate the restoration and revitalisation going on currently throughout Lowestoft but particularly on the historic High Street. 

 The property owner is supportive of the project so work is now underway to raise the £8,000 the project will require. 

 Any info about 'Football Tea' gratefully received, especially if it's historical evidence.

There's also a possible inbuilt reference here to the old eighteen-panel leather footballs, which had integral upper-case Ts worked into the overall pattern and which were commonly known as "T-balls". They were as heavy as lead, when wet, and as hard as wood when dried out. If they weren't well dubbined, they could take the skin off your forehead if you did a glancing header! The T in the advert, here, replicated what the Ts worked into the leather case looked like. The balls had an inner rubber bladder, which had to be inflated to a suitable pressure - usually with a bicycle pump - and then the slit into which the bladder had been inserted had to be laced up just like a shoe. If you didn't get the lace tied neatly and tucked away, that too could give you grief when heading a ball and hitting the wrong spot!

CREDIT: David Butcher 

Might be Lipton Tea think Sir Thomas Lipton ponsored a major football cup in the early 1900s CREDIT:Diane Gooch

If it helps at all. There was a type of tea that mainly footballers drank and came from South American places. It was a type maté tea made with added yerba leaves, and supposedly gave them extra energy. This was before the era of modern commercial energy drinks. CREDIT: Jacqui Brianna Weall

25th May 1907 Lowestoft Journal advert. Lots of other adverts with 'A choice blend at a popular price' on. Also described as 'Wonderful strength & delicious flavour' on others l've seen. CREDIT: Richard Godfrey

That "Football Tea" name has always fascinated me and I have never been able to find out why it was given that name. However, whilst researching something else recently, I came across a reference in a Taunton newspaper from 1909, to a "Footballers' Tea and Smoker", held after a game between Taunton and Exeter Post Office teams. It seems as if some football games were followed by a social get-together tea for the teams before the visiting team returned home to wherever they had travelled from. I am wondering now, whether this sort of event might have been more widespread and perhaps inspired the name of Devereux's "Football Tea"? CREDIT: Stu McCallum