The Master, Suzanne Raine, has started a Selwyn Postcards collection.

When I started as Master last October my pre-predecessor, Professor Richard Bowring, sent me a welcome note on an old black and white photograph of the Chapel. It made me curious: what other pictures could I find?

I turned to eBay, typed the words “Selwyn College”, and discovered a treasure trove of old postcards. And so I bought them, and every day for the next month or so postcards which had once been sent from Selwyn students to their friends and relations arrived back in my pigeon-hole in the Porters’ Lodge.

It was a delight to open the little parcels and find messages from people who were here long ago, making their way back to us today. The earliest card is from 1907; together they cover 119 years of the college’s story. Note how the architecture of the college has changed: you can see the original sunken lawn of Old Court, with topiary trees at each corner and a path from the Main Gate to the Chapel, the wallpapered Chapel walls before the stalls were completed, the dining hall in 1939, the original hedge and trees along the dirt track which was Grange Road, the cherry trees just after planting, and some wonderful 1970s cars outside the main gate. 

I’m still collecting, and plan to frame them all together.

Suzanne Raine MBE

Browse the postcards. Click to enlarge.

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