After 150 years, and millions of holiday communications about delightful or disgusting weather, accommodation and food, English Heritage fears the humble picture postcard is in terminal decline: its research found that only 8% of British adults send a card once a year, and a majority (52%) never send them at all.
Matt Thompson, director of conservation and learning at English Heritage, says: “The postcard was once as much a part of the British holiday as a bucket and spade or the drip of ice cream; a handwritten note dashed off from the pier or a historic landmark, stamped and posted to friends and family back home. But our research reveals a habit fading fast and, if this decline continues, there’s a chance it could become a distant nostalgic memory. There’s something genuinely sad about the idea of this tradition disappearing.”
In an attempt to revive the custom, particularly among children, English Heritage has commissioned three limited-edition designs from children’s illustrators Nick Sharratt and Quentin Blake, which can be collected free from 18 historic sites this summer. They have been printed by Judge’s, England’s last family-run postcard business. Graeme Wolford, whose family took over the 1902 firm in 1983, recalled that in the 1960s and 70s they were selling 12 million cards every year.
Sharratt said he hoped a child would want to keep his cards—but even more that they would be inspired to make a first trip to a postbox: “if they do then maybe postcards have a future after all.” Blake insists: “There’s no better way to put a smile on someone’s face than with a postcard.“
The survey found that adults are nostalgic about postcards: 86% grew up sending them, and 62% hoped their own children would continue the tradition. Postcards, cheap and cheerful and delivered several times a day, were an instant success when they were introduced in Britain in 1870. Within a year, 75 million had been sent, and that rose to 800 million by 1910.
English Heritage has recently acquired a massive cache of historic postcards of Dover Castle, more than 800 collected over decades by Pat Cunningham, the former head historian at the site in Kent. A selection is on display at the castle’s study centre, and visitors are invited to help transcribe them. Many of the messages are distinctly dull, but some from the site’s days as a garrison are more entertaining—or poignant. One reads, “If anyone comes to Dover ask them to bring some potatoes”; another says, “I was very disappointed that I did not see you before I left on Friday, love and kisses from Daddy”.
