Antique & Vintage Postcards

Peering through leaded diamond panes, this haunting real-photo-style card reveals one of England's most eccentric pieces of ecclesiastical glazing — the so-called "Bicycle Window" at St Giles' Church, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, the churchyard famously immortalised by Thomas Gray in his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751). The oval central medallion, set within a lattice of clear quarries, depicts what appears to be an early velocipede or hobby-horse figure, surrounded by heraldic panels bearing the arms of the Penn and Paget families (the inscriptions read Dicis Pipe and Dicis Pyott), dated to the early 17th century — making this one of the earliest known depictions of a two-wheeled riding device in art, a detail that has fascinated cycling historians and stained-glass scholars alike. The card's plain "POST CARD / FOR CORRESPONDENCE / FOR ADDRESS" back with no publisher imprint is typical of early British photographic cards; a pencilled price of 2/- in the stamp box suggests it passed through a dealer's stock.