Continuing my tour through the dozen old vintage post cards I bought the other day, searching for bits of history .....
This is a 1922 post card which was sent to Miss Bagnall who lived on Monkton Street in Ryde on the Isle of Wight. We are not sure who sent it, and it is unclear whether the "6" that heads the message is the date or a sequence number. The message is as follows:
I was very glad indeed to hear that Auntie Sally was better and you must tell her I hope she'll go on improving so as to come out
The card was posted in Manchester and the illustration shows the truly magnificent Manchester Town Hall. Built in the 1870s in Victorian gothic revival style and designed by Alfred Waterhouse (who also designed another of my favourite building, the Natural History Museum in London), the town hall is still a wonderful sight in Manchester. The monument that can be seen in front of the Town Hall is the Albert Memorial, one of hundreds of such memorials that were constructed in a wave of Victorian patriotic grovelling following the death of the Prince Regent. Last time that I was in Manchester, that wide open square in front of the town hall was full of wooden stalls selling all many of products, part of the annual German market. Auntie Sally might have enjoyed it, but Prince Albert and his wife would probably not have been amused.
I grew up thinking that all city buildings were naturally black. What a surprise when they cleaned up London. Your Manchester City Hall doesn't look too sooty at that point.
ReplyDeleteIt may have been sent in 1922 but the photo view was much earlier I think, unless horse drawn cabs were still used in the 1920s. And the time on today's Google Street View is 2:55 PM. The square has trees sprouting through the pavement in an unnatural way.
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