Posted 105 years ago, a letter with a Bath postmark and a 1d stamp featuring the head of George V arrived at Finlay Glen’s flat on Hamlet Road, Crystal Palace in 2021. Glen opened the letter, which was addressed to Katie Marsh, appropriately enough the wife of prominent stamp dealer Oswald Marsh, and found that it was sent by Christabel Mennell, the daughter of wealthy local tea merchant Henry Tuke Mennell, a family friend. In the letter Mennell says she is “quite ashamed of myself after saying what I did,” and that she had been feeling “miserable here with a very heavy cold.” Local historian Stephen Oxford said, “Crystal Palace generated a huge influx of very wealthy people and so to
