Photo Pat Alexander

At first glance. these two images of Mauchline War Memorial at the Catrine Roadend look to be the same. The left hand image is postcard ref number 639/55, while the image on the right is reference number 632/57. (I wonder what ref number 632/56 is) If you look on the high res version, the left hand image shows a large telephone pole with a rat's nest of wires, just to the right of the monument. The telegraph pole has been removed in postcard 632/57, as have all traces of the wires. Strange. So the moral of this story is do not believe everything you see, even from the old days. The postcard on the left was franked 1928.

As an little addition to this story, I noticed a copy of the right hand postcard was being sold on ebay in 2008. I lost the bidding, so e mailed the seller asking for a decent scan. He wouldn't assist. I e mailed the buyer, whose idea of a high res scan was somewhat different from mine, so I gave up. In August 2009, whilst browsing through the extensive archives of ayrshirehistory.com, I came across Pat's folder, and yes, I had a copy of the touched up version all the time anyway!!! The reason ayrshirehistory.com was started all those years ago, was to simply preserve photographs.

The attitude of the seller is exactly how local history gets lost forever!! I am amazed by some of the postcard collectors who hoard their collections to themselves and do not allow any scans to be made. I often wonder if they even care about the views in the first place, or just wish to own a collectable card. Let's compare to stamp collecting for a moment. A collector who owns a valuable stamp owns just that. Someone who has taken a photo of the said stamp for historical records owns a worthless copy. The same goes for postcards. Yet the copied view may be priceless to historians, and the only image of a certain building available.

Left: A milkman, in the Cumnock Road, Mauchline. The writing on the side of the cart, shows the milk run was that of Mr Hodge of Bogwood Farm. The chap with the cash bag is Mr Hodge, and the woman on the left is a Mrs Livingston, who lived in the first house in Station Road.