I recently bought some oldish postcards of St Leonards on Sea at Teddy Tinker’s, 134 London Road. If you don’t know it, this shop is full of vintage clothes and collectables. These include numerous postcards of Hastings and (rather fewer) of St Leonards.
My haul included this one of Warrior Square. I apologise for the inexpert camera work from my phone ! The image is clearly pre World War II, as the line of buildings, on the east side of the square, are the originals and are not, as now, interrupted by a postwar apartment building.
I wanted to date it more precisely. On the other side there was a message and a King George V stamp. He reigned during 1910 to 1936, so that helped. Other than the word Eastbourne I couldn’t read the postmark.
The postcard was addressed to Miss E. Massey of “Bryn Adda”, 14 Grange Road, Eastbourne. The message reads:
Dear E.
Thank you for your letter. I have had a very nice time in Eastbourne today, sat on the front till evening & will return to St Leonards, writing letter in a day or two
love from May
Without a date 14 Grange Road sounded hard. I checked both the 1921 census and the 1939 Register compiled for rationing purposes for that address, but 14 Grange Road lacked a Massey family at those dates.
The card was published by a company named Valentine’s. On the picture side was written 221816. JW and Warrior Square, Hastings (302). I searched on Google for these words: Valentine’s postcard serial numbers. This brought me to the website of a Coventry postcard collector who had a search engine to identify Valentine’s numbers. This told me that negative 221816 dated to 1933, which sounds about right.
I then tried to identify the Massey family using electoral registers online, specifying 1933 and East Sussex (you can’t search by the town), but while there were several Massey households in Eastbourne, none were at 14 Grange Road. Oh, well. E. and her friend May will remain a mystery.