Description:A tinted postcard view of St. Mary's Church, Stafford, looking from St Mary's Place.
The Collegiate Church of St. Mary is the parish church of Stafford. This Grade I listed building is a mixture of genuine medieval and the work of Sir George Gilbert Scott, who restored the church in 1841-1844 in what he imagined to be its original style. The octagonal tower of the church was once crowned with a spire which fell during a storm in 1593 bringing with it part of the choir roof.
As was common with many churches, the public used the nave of the church for their worship, while the deans and canons of the college used the chancel. With the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, this practice ceased and it was not until the 1840s that the screen dividing the two parts of the church was removed.
In later years most of the tombstones were moved and re-laid by the boundary walls of the churchyard, the area was then levelled and grassed over as a Garden of Remembrance. The shape of the Anglo-Saxon St. Bertelin's Chapel is outlined in stone close to the west end of the church.
The postcard was published by William Shaw of Burslem and posted in 1913. It was written from a boarding house at 24, Earl Street, Stafford. The writer, Jack, informs his sister, Miss G. Reynolds of Eagle House, McBean Road, Wolverhampton, of the following: "I will not be home until Saturday evening as we have got 2 coffins and shells in”. Later Eagle House was to be Reynolds’ shop as a cabinet maker, undertaker and complete funeral furnisher.