A new ‘Golden Age’ of picture postcards in Brent!

Our postcard showing an unsigned watercolour of St. Mary’s, Willesden, before 1807

In Britain, the ‘Golden Age’ of picture postcards is traditionally considered to date from between 1902, when the introduction of divided backs allowed the image to fill the whole of the front of the card, and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.  Huge numbers of attractive cards were produced throughout the world in this period – one French publishing company, Les Imprimeries Réunis, printed 100,000,000 cards in 1909 alone!  Willesden and Wembley were not immune to the postcard craze, and the Archives now own well over a thousand old postcards showing Brent in the past, as well as some 300 digital images kindly donated by a local collector. 

Many of these cards are attractive, but, we like to think, none are as attractive as our new set of nine postcards, which are now available at the Archives at 50p each.  These have been printed for us by Stressfreeprint of Bolton, and they have done a very good job indeed.  Each card is framed by a white surround, partly so as not to give the impression that the cards are somehow pretending to be originals, rather than views of archival holdings, and partly because the format of the images we used, which ranged from watercolours through photographs to two old comic postcards, would have made fitting the image over the entire front of a modern postcard problematic.  For example, the two ‘Golden Age’ comic cards are 140 x 89 mm, the standard size introduced in November 1899, but our cards are 150 x 100 mm, the so-called ‘Continental’ size that became popular in the 1970s. 

Another of our new cards – It Is No Crime To Kiss, In Kilburn.  The original was posted on 11th May 1909

The backs of our cards are a conscious reference back to the ‘Golden Age’, and are based on a divided-back card in our collection.

Postcard back.  Note the pre-1914 design

The nine cards in the set are:

• St. Mary’s Church, Willesden, before 1807
• ‘Children in Wilsden [sic] Churchyard’, by Elizabeth Walpole of Petersham, 1807
• Kilburn High Road, 1886
• Advert for Star & Co., High Road, Kilburn, May 1909
• Birn Brothers comic postcard, posted 11^th May 1909
• Humorous postcard by Wildt & Kray, posted 22^nd September 1910
• ‘Water Rats’ – children playing during the opening of King Edward VII Park, Wembley, 4^th July 1914
• ‘Proposed “Fly-Over” at Neasden Circus’, from The Willesden Survey, 1949
• Thatching a Trobridge house in Buck Lane, Kingsbury, early 1980s

The two humorous ‘Golden Age’ cards are of types where the name of the district was added later, so that they could sell anywhere.  It Is No Crime To Kiss, In Kilburn, which we predict will be one of the most popular, also exists for St. Helens, near Liverpool, and for Seattle, Cincinnati, Seattle, Washington, Indianapolis, Berkeley (California) and Roseburg (Oregon) in the USA.

The three Kilburn cards, and a small number of the others, should also be available for purchase at Kilburn Library. 

In addition, we still sell numbers of our older postcards for 30p each.  Do come in and see the selection!

One of our older postcards, a steam navvy building the Great Central Railway (Neasden-Northolt section) at Wembley, 1902

Posted by Malcolm

For a brief history of postcards in Britain, go to http://www.oldpostcardsetc.co.uk/id26.html