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Henry Alfred Scoones

postcard

London Road, Hurst Green, looking south past the junction with Station Road

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Postmaster and stationer at Hurst Green. Scoones issued black and white and sepia-toned real photographic cards of Hurst Green village in the 1920s. The photographs are borderless and the captions are printed in very small sans serif capitals. The backs of the cards are printed in orange with Scoones' name and address on the left. A 1927 postmark has been reported.

Homewood issued cards of Hurst Green before the First World War that were quite similar in design to the Scoones' cards. Some of the pictures were taken from the same vantage points, although obviously on earlier occasions. Possibly, Scoones once sold the Homewood cards and when these ceased to be available he commissioned a replacement series of his own.

Henry Scoones was born at Ticehurst in 1882. He is believed to have been the son of Fanny Scoones from Biddenden in Kent, who was working at Ticehurst Vicarage as a kitchenmaid for the Rev. Arthur Eden. She was only about 18 when he was born. No entry for him has been found in the 1891 and 1911 censuses, but 1901 census records him as a boarder in Odiham High Street in Hampshire, where he was working as a barber's manager. He married Florence Lizzie Orford in Hampshire in the late summer of 1919. He is listed as the Hurst Green village postmaster in Kelly's 1924 and 1927 Sussex Directories but not in the 1922 and 1930 editions though he was still in post in 1930. He died of heart failure following an operation for a perforated gastric ulcer at the Royal East Sussex Hospital in Hastings on June 23, 1933, aged 51. His death certificate notes that he and his wife were still living at Hurst Green Post Office and confirms that he was the village sub-postmaster.

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