It's incredibly easy to miss Emmanuel Church if you walk down Fortune Green Road today...Everyone knows it is there, lots of people as a result of the school have heard of it, but the mansions lfats next and around mean that the attractive Victorian build just melds into the local scenescape...
But this postcard, posted in 1906 (when the church is just 9 years old), shows the building off as being much more imposing as there are no surrounding buildings in the way there are today.
But, bar that overshadow of the buildings, little has changed outwardly today. The architect in 1897 was JA Thomas of Charing Cross and the foundations were laid on 19th June 1897 - I wonder if the poster of this postcard realised that they were at the anniversary of the foundation when they sent this card. In fact given it is posted in Highbury it is quite possible that this person attends this 'new' church as they are a donor/supporter and went to the foundation service in 1906.
In fact, the church authorities ran out of money during the work and in fact the work was not completed until 29th June 1903 so this card is almost certainly produced as a new card just after the building work was completed and sold for the next three or four or more years...
You might even notice that the noticeboard is even in the same place 104 years later...! In fact anyone standing at Chomley Garden on Fortune Green Road would see little different today.
Of course, the Rev'd Jonathan Kester will be delighted to read that the sender of this postcard liked the service (18th June 1906) - not much has changed in that respect I suspect!
The only other side issues from this card is that there was a post in Highbury at 9.15pm and you can be pretty confident that that was not the only post dispatch of the day.
But then again postcards are not much used for short day-today communications like this - I guess this is the 1906 equivalent of an email or facebook message.
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