Kew Gardens - The Victoria Gates. And a Better Bicycle.

            The Postcard

An Auto-Photo Series postcard which was posted in Muswell Hill on Tuesday the 3rd. November 1908 to:

Master E. Holt,
14, Albemarle Gardens,
New Malden,
Surrey.

The message on the back of the card was as follows:

"Nov. 3rd. '08.
Dear Ernest,
Thank you very much for
the pretty postcard that
you sent me.
It was very kind of you to
think of my birthday.
With much love to all,
Eric Mantington".

Kew Gardens

The adult fee for admission to Kew Gardens used to be one pre-decimalisation penny. It now (2021) costs £15. As there were 240 old pennies to the £, it is now 3,600 times more expensive to get in than it used to be.  How's that for inflation?

Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London that houses the largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world. 

Founded in 1840 from the exotic garden at Kew Park in Middlesex, its living collections include some of the 27,000 taxa curated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, while the Herbarium, which is one of the largest in the world, has over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens. 

The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London's top tourist attractions, and is a World Heritage Site.

The Kew site, which has been dated as formally starting in 1759, though it can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Henry, Lord Capell of Tewkesbury, consists of 132 hectares (330 acres) of gardens and botanical glasshouses, four Grade I listed buildings, and 36 Grade II listed structures, all set in an internationally significant landscape. It is listed Grade I on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

Kew Gardens has its own police force, Kew Constabulary, which has been in operation since 1847.

An Improved Bicycle Frame

So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?

Not a lot, although on the 3rd. November 1908, Luis Martinez Silva of Bogota had a patent approved by the United States Patent Office (Patent No. 902920).

Luis' design was for an improved bicycle frame which significantly reduced the strains and jars experienced when cycling over rough surfaces.
   

Taken on: November 4, 2016

Tags:

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Sets appears in: • London • Public Gardens more » • UK « less

Groups appears in: • London Vintage Postcards

Camera: HP Scanjet djf4100 (more info) (hide info)

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