Sepia Saturday 160 - vintage postcards of piers

Thanks for the suggestion of piers as an option for this week's Sepia Saturday. I would have been struggling to stay on theme otherwise. Unsurprisingly piers do feature quite frequently on vintage postcards, or any postcards for that matter, so I had quite a few to choose from. These are some of my favourites and they vary from the very basic Eastham pier, to the grand piers of Brighton and Blackpool, and a few that fit in between.

Vintage postcard of Eastham Pier, Lancashire

Vintage postcard of North Pier, Blackpool, Lancashire, c.1938

Vintage postcard of Palace Pier, Brighton, Sussex

Vintage postcard of the pier, Skegness, Lincolnshire

Vintage postcard of Clarence Pier and Esplanade, Southsea, Hampshire

Vintage postcard of the Central Pier, Morecombe, Lancashire, c.1905

Many more vintage postcards can be found in my online shop

    

Sepia Saturday 96 - Southampton Docks

Once again I am struggling to stay on theme for Sepia Saturday, and this week I've also decided against making a tenuous link. Instead I have dipped into my pile of unprocessed, recently acquired vintage postcards and come up with this one of the Pier at Southampton. What I particularly like about this postcard is the number of ships either moored, queuing, or travelling in convoy in the background. I suspect this is no longer a frequent site in Southampton these days, and I would imagine that the railway tracks no longer go right down on to the pier.

Vintage postcard of the pier, Southampton

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

    

Sepia Saturday 91 - Yours Sincerely, Frank

I've decided not to theme again for this week's Sepia Saturday, but hopefully what I have to offer will be of interest. I picked up a whole batch of vintage postcards last week, so now have a pile of 200+ to sort through. These will make their way on to my various blogs and websites over the next few weeks, but for now here are the first couple, with perhaps a mystery to be solved.

The postcard itself is of a cottage in Brading on the Isle of Wight, c.1902. It was published by Raphael Tuck in the "Rural England" series and is postcard number 1469. It's a vignette style postcard as, at that time, senders were only allowed to write on the front of the card, so the white space around the picture is used for the greeting. As you can see the sender of the card has squeezed in about as much as is possible.

Cottage at Brading, Sile of Wight, c.1902

I don't normally share the other side of the card, but the back of this postcard is a great example of an undivided back, allowing the sender to write only the address.

Undivided back of cottage postcard, c.1902

And now for the mystery. I picked up the postcard below in the same batch as the one above. Both seem to be signed by Frank. There is some similarity in the signatures, but also some differences. I can imagine that the signature on the picture of Frank was written very deliberately and carefully, whereas the postcard has been written a bit more impulsively. So, the mystery is, is Frank in the picture the same Frank who wrote the postcard. The postcard of Frank was published by Heyworth's Studios, St. Annes-on-Sea, Lancashire. So if it's the same Frank he must have gone to the Isle of Wight, bought the postcard, and posted it on his way home to Lancashire as the postmark on the cottage postcard is Manchester.

Yours sincerely, Frank

As usual 100's more vintage postcards on my web site, which should be updated over the next few weeks

    

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