10/04/2026
I made an interesting discovery yesterday while converting the Sunderland Town Hall booklet. In the copy I have, all the images are photocopies, and I had always assumed they were reproduced from photographs. Wrong. Many of them are actually postcards.
This image was the clue that started the discovery. When I posted it in the Memories of Sunderland booklet, someone asked where the two buildings in the background came from. It was a valid question—there are no three-storey buildings at the end of River Street.
While researching the mystery, I found a much higher-quality version of the image. It turns out it isn’t simply a photograph—it’s a POSTCARD.
Postcard makers often began with a photograph and then altered it by hand, adding, removing or changing details with paint. Looking closely at this one, I would bet that most of the cars were added by the postcard artist.
It raises an interesting question: what else in these old Sunderland images is real, and what was artistic licence?
I would love to find more early Sunderland postcards.
