This card, of a church, gave us Christianity, the world`s largest religion, though it encompasses six quite different branches, Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian - of which Catholicism is by far the oldest.
Now I picked this church at random not realising that it had such a tale to tell. The card tells us, on the front, that this is South Elmham, and, on the reverse, mentions the Church of St. Nicholas, no other. Therefore I started to research, only to find there are six Churches in South Elmham, and none are called St. Nicholas.
However, a bit more research unearths the fact that there was a St. Nicholas, and in South Elmham, both a Church and a parish, but there were few residents, and it was merged to form the Church and parish of All Saints and St. Nicholas. This took place quite a while before the issue of our card though - as long ago as 1737 - at which time the Church of St. Nicholas was said to need repair, and shortly after it was declared as a ruin. Today, only a cross remains, as a marker of its location, but this is on private land and is growing ever more obscured by vegetation. There also seem to be no images of it, and all that survives is some stained glass, which now brightens the Church at Eyke, and odd pieces of masonry which were used to rebuild sections of St. Peter`s Hall.
After even more research I can confirm that the photograph of the round tower on this card is the Church of All Saints - but that makes it even stranger that the text on the card reads "The Church of St. Nicholas is of flint and stone, the south doorway is Norman, so is the font, also the round western tower, containing one bell" - which applies to the Church of All Saints.
Sadly, like its predecessor, the Church of All Saints is also now a redundant Church, with insufficient residents to need to be classed as a parish and provided with regular Church services. The Church is upkept, by the Churches Conservation Trust, but they rely almost entirely on donations, and, without parishioners, that falls on people like us, who do not live in the area.
I am delighted to be able to feature this card, with thanks to reader Mr. Frost, because it has a companion, which we featured as part of the newsletter for the 19th of March, 2022, on Monday the 21st of March. Today therefore becomes the home page for both sets, or, I should say, all the sets, for in our original reference book to the issues of W. A. and A.C. Churchman (RB.10, published in 1948) this item is described as :
46. Feb.1912. 50. EAST SUFFOLK CHURCHES (titled series). Size 2 11/16" x 1 7/16" or 67 x 36 m/m. Numbered 1-50. Fronts printed by letterpress, half tone in one printing, in BLACK. Backs in blue on CREAM card, with descriptions. Printed by Mardon, Son & Hall.
47. 1917. 50. EAST SUFFOLK CHURCHES. Identical to (46) but backs in blue on WHITE card.
48. Aug.1923. 50. EAST SUFFOLK CHURCHES. Identical to (46) but fronts in sepia
So why the three sets? Well look at the dates. The original dates from before the First World War was even a grumbling. However the second, issued just as the war was perhaps felt to be coming to an end, was perhaps designed as their tentative return to card issuing, using slightly whiter board that they had in stock, but from every other point of view a straight up reprint - and yet no month of issue is shown, so perhaps it was merely printed as a trial, and then abandoned, whilst the war rolled on? Then the third version, in 1923, was that their first set after the cessation of hostilities?
This is a good story, but we know that Churchman sets continued to be issued through 1916, with "Boy Scouts", first, second, and third, in respectively January, August, and October of that year, and "Army Badges of Rank" in March. However, the white card version of our set may have been a rush job, hoping to continue their issues a little longer, but being unable to do so, for whatever reason, that we will probably never know. And as far as the sepia version being their first set after the War, sadly that is not true either, for in 1922, they issued two sets of "Rivers and Broads", and the set of "Boxing", the hints and tips one, which was also issued by Davies, Franklyn Davey, Ogden and Williams.
In the 1955 London Cigarette Card Company catalogue, however, there is a different order of events. That reads :
18. 50 East Suffolk Churches :-
BW - A. Black front, cream back (1912) odds 1/6 to 5/- : sets £12
BW - B. Black front, white back (1912) odds 3 to 7/6 : sets £12
U - C. Sepia front (1917, reissued 1923) odds 1/6 to 4/- : sets £10
If this is correct, and both the black and white versions were issued at the same time, with the sepia cards being the later re-issue(s), it makes more sense - but, more importantly, this entry means that there were enough of the white backed version available to be able to not only offer complete sets, but to sell them at the same price as the cream backed cards, though the odds of the whiter cards were obviously less plentiful as they were more expensive.
Curiously though, in our original World Tobacco Issues Index, issued at more or less the same time as the above catalogue, the sets are reduced to :
EAST SUFFOLK CHURCHES. Sm. Nd. (50) ...C82-16
A. Black and White
B. Sepia. Reissued 1923.
The same text, and of the two sets alone, also appears in our updated version, but with a new card code, of C504-230