One of the most historically loaded street scenes in the Edwardian postcard canon, this glowing chromolithograph by artist Arthur C. Payne captures Holywell Street — the narrow, timber-framed lane running off the Strand that was swept away in 1902–03 to make way for the Aldwych improvement scheme — just as living memory of it was still raw and fresh. Known in its final decades as "Booksellers' Row," Holywell Street was infamous for its secondhand book and print shops, and before that for its trade in sensational and risqué literature; its demolition was both mourned by antiquarians and celebrated by reformers. Payne's painting, reproduced here in Bavaria by S. Hildesheimer & Co. (Series No. 5342), shows the street in its Victorian twilight: a couple in Edwardian dress stroll the cobbles, a top-hatted gentleman strides away past a newsagent's board, horse-drawn traffic threads the distance, and the crooked jetted upper storeys lean companionably overhead — a London that had already ceased to exist when the card was printed. The "Vanished London" series title makes the elegiac intent explicit, and the card stands as a primary visual document of one of London's most controversial urban clearances.