The postcard below is of St. Mary’s Church, Slaugham, Sussex. Despite being reasonably local to me it is a church I haven’t yet visited, partly because the connection to my family history is not particularly strong. One notable exception however was George Thomas GASSON ( my 2x great-grandfather and lunatic) who was baptised there on the 29th January 1854.
There is no mention of a publisher on this postcard, but it is very similar in style to those issued by A.H. Homewood of Burgess Hill, Sussex, but it doesn’t bear his tell-tale name and place identifier.
At the top left of the postcard you can see the corners of two stamps reaching around from the back of the card. The image below show the back in all its “glory”. Not a lot to look at and not much of a message, still I am sure Ma was pleased to hear that Ethel had arrived safely.
It seems quite surprising to me that a postcard of a rural church in Slaugham, Sussex was sent from Saxmundham, Suffolk to an address in Belvedere, Kent. I wonder what the story was behind this trio of places?
Perhaps more curious is the use of two half-penny stamps. The postmark clearly shows a date of the 24th September 1908 and the inland postage rate didn’t go up to one penny until 1918, before that the rate would have been half a penny. Strange? Am I missing something?
