Antique & Vintage Postcards

The grand Victorian palazzo of the Palace Hotel commands a sweeping lawn in this crisp Jarrold Cotman-Color chrome card, its mansard roofline and warm Derbyshire stone glowing in summer sunshine — the same palatial building that had welcomed spa visitors to Buxton since 1868 and would later reinvent itself as a conference and leisure hotel. Sent airmail on Saturday, July 3 (postmarked 1971) by a traveler identified only as "GRS," the message to "Ethyl" in Atlanta, Georgia describes leaving London that morning on a tour to Scotland with twenty people "mostly from Canada, S. Africa, & Australia," and spending the night in Buxton at precisely the hotel shown — a delightful moment of real-time travel correspondence. A 4p brown Queen Elizabeth II Machin definitive and a blue Par Avion label make this a tidy transatlantic chrome-era mailing.