Description:A postcard view of Sandon Road looking towards Stafford. On the immediate left is the junction with Henry Street and beyond is Edwin Bostock’s shoe factory built in 1903. The houses on the right still exist (2026), although without their garden walls.
Lotus was originally named Bostock's and was founded in the eighteenth century by Thomas Bostock, a cobbler. His three sons started their own factories in Stafford, Stone and Northampton. Edwin Bostock's original Stafford factory was on Foregate Street. The building was destroyed by fire in 1901 but was rebuilt on Sandon Road in 1903. In 1919 the three factories amalgamated to become Lotus Ltd. The Sandon Road factory was demolished in 1998 and replaced by housing.
The postcard was published by N. Norris of Stafford (as number 1633) and posted from Stafford to Margate in 1944.