A Crystal Palace man was staggered to receive a letter 100 years after it was sent in 1916.
Theatre director Finlay Glen, 27, of Hamlet Road said he was “mystified” by the long-overdue arrival.
It would have been written around the same time as The Battle of the Somme and features a stamp bearing George V.
Local historian Stephen Oxford, 71, told the News: “I was a bit surprised to start with – it came out of the blue completely… but once I read it I was delighted!”
“We were obviously pretty surprised and mystified as to how it could have been sat around for more than 100 years,” said Finlay.
According to Stephen, who is also editor of the Norwood Review, the letter is from Christabel Mennell, daughter of a tea merchant, to Katie Marsh, wife of the local stamp magnate Oswald Marsh.
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In the letter, which she sent while holidaying in Bath, Christabel mentions feeling “quite ashamed of myself after saying what I did”.
She adds that she had been “miserable here with a very heavy cold”.
According to Stephen, the correspondence shines new light on the relationships between the area’s prominent Georgian families.
“These were two Quaker families and they gave a lot to the area… in terms of education and mental health…. Christabel visited local mental health hospitals and wrote a report on it and her father supported the Croydon College of Art,” he said.
He also said Oswald Marsh was a highly-respected stamp dealer who often helped in courts during cases of stamp fraud.
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Speculation is rife as to how the letter took so long to arrive, with some suggesting it had spent over a century hidden in a dark corner of the Sydenham sorting office.
The envelope has a stamp from the Sydenham sorting office, which was in operation for over a century before it closed down in 2018.
Some people believe the letter was found while the office was being cleared out and somebody made its way back into mail circulation.
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “Incidents like this happen very occasionally, and we are uncertain what happened in this instance.
“We appreciate that people will be intrigued by the history of this letter from 1916, but we have no further information on what might have happened.”
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Stephen said the descendants of both the Mennell and Marsh families had been in contact with him.
Rather than claiming ownership of the letter, he said they’d both offered to help with his research into their families’ histories.
The letter’s next destination is uncertain but Stephen hopes it will conclude its journey in a local archive where the public can see it.
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