Our Centenary Card
for May 2023
Our original Wills Reference Book part four tells us that these were large cards, measuring 79 x 62 m/m, and the fronts were printed in letterpress in colour. The backs were grey with descriptive texts, and the set was a Home Issue only.
This is rather odd, for the Universities featured in the set were a mixture of British and Overseas ones, so they would have appealed to collectors in other areas of the globe.
The ones from Great Britain were Aberdeen, Birmingham, Belfast, Bristol, Dublin, Durham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, National University of Ireland, Queen's University of Ireland, Royal University of Ireland, Leeds, London, St. Andrews, Sheffield, Victoria University of Manchester, and Wales. Whilst the overseas ones were Bombay, Cape of Good Hope, Hong Kong, Madras, Melbourne, Queensland, and Sydney.
One interesting fact that you may not realise is that there is a slightly hidden extra connection to W.D. & H.O. Wills within this set. This is card number 5, showing the Arms of The University of Bristol. If you look at the reverse text it starts with "This is one of the modern Universities, owing much to the generosity of the family of Wills." And later in the text it tells us that one of the five symbols is "a sun in splendour" (this is taken from the Wills Arms)." Wills did more for the University than add the sun to the crest though, and several buildings and Halls of Residence not only carry their name but were provided because of money the family donated. They also gave the land known as Tyndall`s Park, and part of Leigh Woods.
In addition, for trade card collectors, there is another important symbol, and that is the horse, which represents the Fry Chocolate family, who also had much to do with the founding of the university. Indeed the Research Centre is named after Norah Fry, who was a member of the University Council for half a century. However, for some reason, Fry is not mentioned directly on the reverse of the card; it just calls the emblem "a horse courant" (which means a horse running).
This set replaced "Arms of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges", which had been circulating for quite a while, since October 1922 - and they probably arrived without a lot of people noticing, for those cards are pretty much the same front design as these. Our set lasted just over six months, and was replaced by "Old Furniture" - the first series of which started in October 1923, and the second series in January 1924. I imagine that changeover may also have gone unnoticed...
There is one thing mentioned on the reverse of this particular card that you may not know about, and indeed you may not understand even if you read it, but I looked it up. The card says that these arms "...are curious. They are an almost unique example inasmuch as the fesse is of the heraldic colour "murrey". Though popular for liveries, its use is almost unknown on a shield." Now the fesse is the horizontal band across the shield - and murrey is a cross between mulberry and purple, and it is only used as a "stain", this being a non-standard colour only used in post-medieval heraldry. By the way the motto means "The best inspiration is truth".
And as to why we have this card, well the answer to that is also on this card it says that "...in 1893 the three University Colleges of Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Bangor were incorporated into a University of Wales". And Bangor is the important one as far as our story is concerned, because in the 1960s a student at University College, Bangor, had the idea of bringing back St Dwynwen's Day. She did this by making greetings cards, or more correctly by commisssioning them. Remarkably the idea of a special day for Welsh lovers really took off, so much so that in 2003 Tesco even issued free cards in some of its stores, with prizes inserted amongst them. I have never seen one, but if it was given away then surely this is a cartophilic item?