The Faith Press

Leighton Buzzard

The Faith Press was not only responsible for some of the earliest albums, but also for some of the best in terms of quality and artwork. Their successor in the publishing field, The Society of the Faith, sadly do not have an archive of this material. Much was lost during World War II, and more lost when the Faith Press went into liquidation.
Some of the earlier album covers of the earlier albums up to around 1930 were illustrated by T. Noyes-Lewis, a notable artist of religious subjects. He may well have illustrated the stamps too, as they are of a consistent style and too the same quality.

Because of the number of publications from The Faith Press, and resulting page size, I have split these entries over other pages. Even so, the Sunday Stamp Album is long and may take time to load for some readers. Please be patient.

There were several titles issued during The Faith Press’ long run of album production. The earliest seem to be the Childermote and Eldermote albums. These were published from 1906 to at least 1938. They were presumably aimed at younger and older children respectively; in the early part of the twentienth century those aged up to 16 would attend Sunday School.
Both have 52 spaces for each Sunday of the year, but these only occupy part the album. The second part is for weekdays of special religious weeks such as Advent, other Holy days, and Extra Observances. How and when these stamps were awarded is unknown.
Both simple card and embossed hardback covers seem to have been available for each title each year. different sets of stamps may have been intended for the differently bound albums. I cannot be sure of that yet with insufficient examples in my collection, but the embossed cover album has more colourful stamps than the plain covered albums.

These were soon followed by the Sunday Stamp Albums; the earliest record I have seen dates from 1915-16. Because of their longevity and general availability, I have divided these into two pages; those up to 1945 and those after 1945. Throughout this series of albums appears to have also been issued in thick embossed and thinner printed card covers. Added to that the covers have been found in different colours, several different in some years.
The stamps too also seem to have been issued with different styles in a given year. I say seems, because while I have more than one album for a year with different stamps there is no guarantee that the stamps which were handed out were that intended for that year. In fact I have one album from the 1950s with stamps that also appear in an album from the 1930s. But there are easily identifiable styles of stamps being used concurrently suggesting that both albums and stamps came as different editions, and with no restriction of which style of stamp to be used with the differently covered albums

The Faith Press published other albums and stamps, such as The Chaplet Stamp Album and collecting cards, possibly for attendance at week long sessions. These have been grouped under Anything Else for now.