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S. H. Holland

postcard

Isle of Thorns, Ashdown Forest, August 1934

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Crawley resident. In the mid 1930s Holland published some air photograph cards of Sussex, including about six views of the Isle of Thorns on Ashdown Forest with a printed date "August 1934", a card without a caption that is thought to show the Brighton-London road at Pease Pottage, two more cards of Elmer Beach near Bognor, and at least one of Cowfold Monastery. Aerial views of Thurlestone and Salcombe in South Devon show that Holland did not confine his attentions to his home county.

The cards are well produced with glossy black and white photographs set in white borders. The captions, when present, are printed on the left side of the border under the photographs; Holland's name and home town appear on the right.

The aerial photographic firm Aerofilms published their own version of one of the Isle of Thorns cards omitting Holland's name and the August 1934 date. Their card is numbered H 1689. No other cards produced by Aerofilms are known to have an H prefix and the serial number is also anomalous because the photographs that they took in August 1934 had numbers around 45,000. Perhaps Holland commissioned Aerofilms to take the air photographs that he used for his postcards, and at a later date got them to take over production of the cards, hence the H prefix, selected by Aerofilms to indicate orders from Holland.

Kelly's 1934 Sussex Directory lists Sydney Holland as a private resident at 23 Perryfield Road in Crawley, but whether he was the publisher of the air photograph cards has not been established. His name does not appear in the 1938 edition of the Directory.

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