Mystery as postcard arrives at address – more than 120 years after it was sent

A postcard has been delivered to a building society in Wales an astonishing 121 years after it was sent. Staff at Swansea Building Society got a surprise when they checked the mail at their head office on the morning of Friday, August 16.

There was the usual mortgage and savings related letters, but also a postcard, which dropped out from the middle of the pile with a King Edward VII stamp on it, dated August 3, 1903, reports WalesOnline. It was destined for a lady called Lydia Davies, who presumably lived there at the time there were houses, instead of the bank.

Henry Darby, marketing and communications officer at Swansea Building Society, said: “It turned up completely out of the blue on Friday. The postman came to the door as normal with lots of letters regarding mortgages and savings and stuff for our team to process. As one of the managers was going through it, a postcard dropped onto the table, not in an envelope, not with a note, just as it was.” For the latest Swansea news, sign up to our newsletter here.

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Mr Darby said: “The address is correct, we are still 11 (and 12) Cradock Street, but it’s 121 years later than expected! It’s wild, actually. A little bit spooky. The stamp itself is King Edward, so he was King from 1901 until 1910, and you could tell straight away from the handwriting and the way it speaks, ‘Dearest, I could not’, it was very much of the time.”

“From what we can work out, the postage stamp says August 3, 1903. Pencilled on the top it says Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, so we’re wondering if it’s come from Fishguard to Miss Lydia. It’s quite vague – the postcard. They are speaking of something they are both aware of but don’t want to reveal it on the postcard.”

The front of the postcard depicts a drawing of a wintry scene with a stag in the foreground straddling a frozen tree stump, with a body of water and snowy mountains beyond, all beneath a starry sky. A boat of some kind appears to be travelling across the water and the caption at the bottom left says simply, ‘The Challenge’.

At the top corner the postcard reads: ‘Remember me to Miss Gilbert + John with love to all from (unreadable)’. The main body of the postcard says: ‘Dear L. I could not, it was impossible to get the pair of these. I am so sorry, but I hope you are enjoying yourself at home. I have got now about 10 (unreadable) pocket money not counting the train fare so I’m doing alright.’

The bank has put an appeal out on social media asking for anyone with information on Ms Davies, or anything else to help shed light on the mystery, to come forward and get in touch via their social media page by clicking here.

Mr Darby said: “We know it’s quite long ago, but we thought it would be so fascinating to know what was life like on Cradock Street 121 years ago. The building society itself was set up 20 years after the postcard was sent. From what we could gauge yesterday looking at the archives, we think there were more traditional houses in this place which were bombed, and our office is a rebuild but the address has stayed the same. Opposite, the Albert Hall was open at the time in the 1860s, when Oscar Wilde performed, so Lydia was probably walking across the road to see those people who performed there.”

A Royal Mail spokeswoman said: “It is likely that this postcard was put back into our system rather than being lost in the post for over a century. When an item is in our system, we are under obligation to deliver it to the correct address.”