A promise that cigarettes can give you sweet-smelling breath is just one of the astonishing claims which leap from the walls of Mick Botting's garage, porch and garden.

Mick, from Haywards Heath, does not dabble in magic. It is his passion for antique enamel signs that brought together this collection of pledges from a bygone era.

On every surface outside his house, and overflowing into the kitchen, sitting room and even the bedrooms, are adverts from the late 19th Century through to the Fifties promoting anything from pills to cure anaemia and potions to help with the ironing.

The bright signs used to be a familiar sight on shop fronts and railway stations.

Behind the shiny tin surfaces are tales of local history - from the allotments of Burgess Hill to the railway omnibuses of Worthing in the Thirties.

Mick, 65, started his collection more than 30 years ago.

He said: "I picked up my first sign at a boot sale in the Seventies. It was a Brook Bond tea ad in orange.

"I loved the colour and the lettering. It felt like a piece of history, from the days of pea soup fogs and ration books."

He hung it in his porch and was hooked. He now has more than 160.

Among the adverts for Lyon's tea, Fry's chocolates and Two Steeple's pure wool underwear (that will not shrink) is one for the Worthing Transit Company of the Thirties.

It advertises rides to and from the station in the old railway omnibus taxis for sixpence, with luggage tuppence on top.

Mick said: "What I like about the signs is they've captured a world so different to nowadays.

"You can't imagine getting a ride anywhere for that amount, or buying cigarettes for three pence.

"These signs were made to last for years. Now the prices change so regularly it wouldn't be worth it."

Some of Mick's favourite signs were found at the back of a dusty garden shed in Cuckfield after a chance conversation.

He said: "I was a postman for 18 years and I would always keep my eyes and ears open for any signs.

"One day I was talking to an old man in Cuckfield and it turned out he was a sign maker and his father had been one before him.

"He took me to the shed in the garden where there were several signs.

"People would bring them round for his father to copy in the Twenties and some had been left behind."

The value of the signs has grown over the years with Mick's collection now worth at least £8,000.

Mick said it was now rare to stumble across them except at specialist antique fairs.

He said: "They are just too expensive these days. If I see one I really like, I sell one I don't like as much on the internet first."