More London Life

Thanks to German printing technology, this is an unusually well produced postcard with a detailed image of London buses posed outside the Bank of England. A somewhat diffident constable holds up the traffic alongside a young messenger boy who succeeds in occupying the centre of the picture. A handful of pedestrians stare in a desultory fashion as the camera operator prepares for the shot.  History records that the advertised play, The Ogre by Henry Arthur Jones, opened to lukewarm reviews on September 11th. 1911 at St. James’s Theatre which dates the postcard to the late summer of 1911.

Route 7's history can be traced back to 1 November 1908, when an un-numbered daily route operating between Wormwood Scrubs and Liverpool Street station, was allocated route number 7. Today’s route 7 connects East Acton with Oxford Circus. Route 9 is one of several claimants to the title of London’s oldest bus route, dating back to 1851. In its present form it runs between Hammersmith and Aldwych. Both routes are a lot shorter than in their heyday and neither penetrate as far east as Bank, making this an unrepeatable encounter. Pedantic note - both buses display spelling mistakes. An extra letter B has been added to Wormwood Scrubs on the 7, while the first letter N has been omitted from the word Kensington on the 9.

 

Bridge Postcards of 2022

There’s an incalculable number of postcards featuring London’s Tower Bridge - it may well be the capital’s most popular subject.  But there are very few examples of this view of the bridge, looking at the roadway. It’s always a joy when a publisher of cards takes the risk of printing views that defy the prevailing visual cliché. Two more examples of alternate views of over-familiar subjects come from Bristol (Clifton Bridge) and Saltash, on the Cornish bank of the Tamar, where Brunel’s famous bridge has been relegated to the background in the same way that Hokusai treated Mount Fuji.  The next group of cards are of footbridges in Yorkshire, Roubaix and the coast of the north of Ireland.  Following them is a quartet of North American bridges that typically reflect the American preference for hammering together crudely formed rebarbative metal sections in the hope they may stand for thousands of years.  Four images of swing-bridges follow - two from East Anglia and one each from Saigon and the Manchester Ship Canal. Then two curiosities from Lincoln and Linlithgow of bridges that reflectively resolve themselves into perfect circles. Our annual survey concludes with a trio of trestle type constructions - always easy on the eye but not always the most reliable formula. These examples are from Yorkshire (Hardcastle Crags - a bridge designed to be temporary and since dismantled), Crumlin in Wales (also dismantled) and Salta in Argentina.