The “Tuck” postcards

In the first half of the twentieth century the renowned topographical photographic company of Raphael Tuck specialised in getting out and about, capturing urban and rural scenes. Bassingham fell within their purview and there are postcards of the village to be had if you look hard enough. At present, I own only two of them as they are all proving highly elusive. I also believe that there should be TEN postcards in this sub-set, but I can find no evidence to prove this theory. My logic isn’t flawless, but when you see the catalogue numbers, I’m sure that you will agree with me! 🙂

All prefixed by the code BGHM, at present I have discovered only six postcards (with an extra from Wellingore) as follows:

• BGHM.1. – The Village, Bassingham (High Street)
• BGHM.2. – The Village, Bassingham (Stores & Chapel)
• BGHM.3. –
• BGHM.4. – The Memorial and Village, Bassingham
• BGHM.5. –
• BGHM.6. –
• BGHM.7. – The River and Church, Bassingham
• BGHM.8. –
• BGHM.9. – The Church from River, Bassingham
• BGHM.10. – The Bridge and River, Bassingham
• WLGR.13. – Somerton Castle, Wellingore

And here they are…

[BGHM.1.] “The Village, Bassingham” (Raphael Tuck, c1942)

[BGHM.2.] “The Village, Bassingham” (Raphael Tuck, c1942)

[BGHM.4.] “The Memorial and Village, Bassingham” (Raphael Tuck, c1942)

[BGHM.7.] “The River and Church, Bassingham” (Raphael Tuck, c1942)

[BGHM.9.] “The Church from River, Bassingham” (Raphael Tuck c1942)

[BGHM.10.] “The Bridge and River, Bassingham” (Raphael Tuck, c1942)

[WLGR.13.] “Somerton Castle, Wellingore” (Raphael Tuck, c1939)

The waters are muddied further still by the TuckDB Postcards website which specialises in recording all known postcards by the company, because whilst confirming a “first use” date of 9th August 1942*, it only lists those same six postcards.

So where are the missing four? There surely must be BGHM.3., 5, 6, and 8 out there somewhere? Why would there be gaps in the sequence? And one can only speculate as to what the views might have been… 🤷‍♂️

And if you have postcards 4, 7, 9 or 10 for sale please get in touch. 😉

*“First use” is the first recorded date that the website/society has found for one of the postcards being postally used. This, of course, does not rule out the possibility of an earlier posting somewhere. For what it’s worth, I would place these as quite a few years earlier than 1942 because John Morshead was killed in 1934 and his shop was taken over by Robert Green, presumably in the same year. Postcard BGHM.2. shows Morshead’s name still in situ over the shop front, something which would have almost certainly changed within a year or so at the very latest. Which begs the question, why on earth would Tuck sit on a set of postcards without releasing them for almost eight years? As further evidence of this, the Somerton Castle postcard has a “first use” date of 10th September 1939.