Sunday Stamps 33 - Southern Rhodesia Royal Visit 1947

Thanks for everyone's comments and interest from my last week's Sunday Stamps posting. As this week's Sunday Stamps is 'themeless' I've decided to share a few more from Southern Rhodesia. These stamps commemorate the royal visit of 1947 by King George VI and the Queen Mother on the red 1d stamp, and Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret of the green 1/2d stamp. I must have bought these stamps separately at some stage in the past as I'm pretty sure they weren't part of those I inherited as they look very clean and unused. They're probably not as interesting as others I've shared as there's no indication of their history as they're unused, but I guess they have a history of their own ... like how did they make it out of a post office in Southern Rhodesia and back to the UK ... or maybe they were part of the stamp collection of someone living in Southern Rhodesia ... or maybe these stamps were printed in the UK and never made it to Rhodesia in the first place.

Southern Rhodesia Royal Visit, 1947

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Vintage Postcard for National Dog Day

Great postcard today on this week's Postcard Friendship Friday. National Dog Day is another commemoration I've not come across before. I don't have many postcards of the canine variety but thought that this one fitted the bill quite nicely. It's a Prince Charles Spaniel, by the artist N.Drummond. The postcard was published by Raphael Tuck and dates back to 1921.

Prince Charles Spaniel by the artist N.Drummond, c.1921

As usual 100's more vintage postcards on my web site

Theme Thursday - Work

I think I blogged this postcard way back in 2009, but it seems to fit this week's Theme Thursday work quite well, so please forgive me for re-posting it. The postcard shows the dinner hour at the Huntley and Palmer's Biscuit Factory in Reading, Berkshire. I remember as a young child my father, although working in the Civil Service rather than a factory, would always come home for lunch. For most of us I suspect those days are long gone. Many of us have long commutes to work, some stay away during the week, and the thought of coming home for lunch seems quite alien now. In fact even having a lunch hour is quite a challenge, with many people grabbing a quick sandwich and returning to their desks to drop crumbs between the keys of their laptops. On the flip side of the coin though, many of us are fortunate enough to be able to work from home sometimes, so we're already at home for lunch. This postcard also has a feel of the 1960's/1970's kids' TV show  'Trumpton', or was is 'Chigley', about it, where a whistle blew at the end of the day and all the factory workers left for the day and danced.

Dinner Hour at the Huntley and Palmers Biscuit Factory, Reading, Berkshire

    

As usual 100's more vintage postcards on my web site

Sunday Stamps 32

My contribution to this week's Sunday Stamps is a bit of a cheat, but please bear with me while I explain my story. Some of you who have read my previous stamp related posts will recall I inherited a family stamp collection many years ago. This 'stamp' was part of that collection, and although not really a stamp, I've always regarded it as one and it's been kept alongside my British Commonwealth stamps ever since. Rather than a stamp which has been stuck on to an envelope, it's more like one of those transfers that you rubbed on with a coin, that you used to get (and maybe still do) with packets of kids' sweets. It's a 4 pence registration stamp from Southern Rhodesia, although curiously postmarked in Deal, Kent. Hopefully there's another Sunday Stamps reader who might know a little more about this registration stamp and what it was used for.

Vintage postcards of Olympic Airways

I don't have much in the way of aviation postcards to keep with this week's Postcard Friendship Friday theme, and certainly nothing as historic as the one Beth has posted, but I do have these four of planes in the Olympic Airways fleet. These were amongst some of the very first postcards I bought several years ago. They're not posted so I have no idea of the date, but I'm more than sure that one or more blog readers will be able to help there and be able to identify the year based on the types of aircraft ... my guess would be mid-70's.

Olympic Airways 737-320

Olympic Airways 727-200

Olympic Airways, 737-200

Olympic Airways, 747-200B

As usual, lots more vintage postcards on my web site

    

Sepia Saturday 88 - Double Tree

Keeping with Alan's Tree theme for this week's Sepia Saturday, I've dipped into (or should that be leafed through) my vintage postcards collection and drawn out this one. It's a curious postcard showing something called the Double Tree, which is in the New Forest near Rufus Stone. The picture shows 2 different species, Oak and Beech, growing intertwined with one another. Admittedly I've only managed to undertake the briefest of research but although the Rufus Stone itself is well documented, I can't find anything about the Double Tree.

Double Tree, Oak and Beech, near Rufus Stone

As usual, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site

Theme Thursday - Split

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past week but I've been away sunning, sailing, water skiing and windsurfing  with the family in Greece for the past week. It was a bit of a shock returning to the British weather today. Almost feel like booking a flight straight back out there again. I'll ease myself gently back into blogging with my contribution to this week's Theme Thursday, split. I had thought of sharing a multiview postcard as, an admittedly poor attempt on the theme, but then I came across this vintage postcard, which is actually split horizontally by the name of the village. I won't transpose it for you in the text as I'm bound to copy it down wrong, but you can read it below. It's normally abbreviated simply to Llanfairpwll, and, situated on the island of Anglesey in North Wales, boasts the longest village name in Europe.

Llanfairpwll station and the Two Bridges

As usual, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site

    

Sunday Stamps 30: Tasmania, c.1903

For this week's 'themeless' Sunday Stamps, I've decided to share a couple more stamps from my inherited collection today. These 2 are of Tasmania and date back to the early 20th century. Although Tasmania ceased to be an independent colony in 1901, it seems stamps continued to be produced after that date until about 1913 when they were replaced with a more generic Australia stamp. The first is a 2d stamp of Hobart, c.1905. The second is a 1/2d stamp of Lake Marion, c.1903. Apologies for the skew of the scan - no matter how hard I tried I could not get them any more aligned on the scanner.

Alfreton, The Old Toll Bar House

I used to be able to remember which of my many vintage postcards I'd shared on Theme Thursday, Postcard Friendship Friday and Sepia Saturday, but I must admit my memory is going to let me down one of these days so I need to come up with a system whereby I can record this. However, as I seem to spend all my working days in the land of excel, I'm not sure I want to do this in my spare time as well, so for now you'll have to forgive me if I share the occasional postcard that I've shared before. Having said that, I'm fairly sure I've not shared this one before. This is a vintage postcard of the Old Toll-Bar House, Alfreton, Derbyshire. I did a small amount of research but could not find anything to suggest this building exists today, or if it does it's definitely had a change of purpose and almost certainly surrounded by others. I managed to find various books on amazon relating to Toll Houses in Wiltshire, Suffolk and Lancashire, but alas none for Derbyshire so I know very little about this one. Looking at the telegraph poles to the right-hand side of the postcard, I would think it probably had a railway running alongside the road.

The Old Toll-Bar House, Alfreton, Derbyshire

As usual, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site ... and also a newly created page containing reviews and links to books about vintage

Theme Thursday: Bridge

Once again it's my vintage postcards which come to my aid for this week's Theme Thursday, Bridge. I did have quite a lot to choose from but have already posted some of these in a bridges of Great Britain posting I did back in 2010. I double-checked and know for certain that I did not include this one though, so here it is. It's The Hermitage Bridge, at Dunkeld, Perthshire, Scotland, c.1904. It was published by one of my favourite postcard publishers, S.Hildesheimer, and the artist was Ernest Longstaffe.

The Hermitage Bridge, Dunkeld, Perthshire, c.1904

As usual 100's more vintage postcards on my web site ... and a relatively new addition, a page containing reviews and links to books about vintage