Pinstripes & Parchment

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Postcard 1920s Bicycle Window Stoke Poges Church Bucks England RPPC-Style
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Pre-linen · 1925

Postcard 1920s Bicycle Window Stoke Poges Church Bucks England RPPC-Style

Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, England1925Pre-linenFair-Good

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.

$16.95
Fair-Good
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PC-02056 · Unknown
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