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The Gospel Stamp Album
Originally owned by Peter Boyd, attending Bombay Cathedral, despite being a UK distributed album. The cover measures 135 by 110 mm. The cover is rigid card with a textured finish and with an embossed gold ornamentation; very smart even though it is faded and worn a bit after nearly 100 years.
Click album images to enlarge
 
1918
The stamps are rather incomplete. They measure 36x31mm, in full colour, and are perforated.
 
The following albums all have their own distinct style, with characteristic artwork by T. Noyes Lewis. Whether he is responsible for the stamp artwork too is unknown, but it is likely.
A 1929-30 albums and a pair, all originally belonging to siblings, from 1930-31 have protective paper sleeves for the covers. Though these are worn and a bit grubby the sleeves have protected the albums quite well, for all three are in A+ condition and the covers themselves have very vibrant covers. It is possible that the later albums below also had sleeves originally, but these have been lost. The years have been deduced by the Sunday dates and Easter. These years are the only possible for consecutive years.
The 1929-30 album was Ethel Cherryer’s. It is missing only two Sunday stamps, but includes a birthday stamp on the special days pages at the end. Her 1930-31 album again is only short of two stamps, but has two Never Absent Never Late stamps. Her sister Georgina’s is complete apart from four stamps, As these were different days to Ethel, it is more likely that sickness may have been the cause rather than a family holiday.
 The paper sleeve
 
 
A full album from 1932-33 of 64 stamps plus a birthday stamp. It is not known if the spaces for the stamps were for specific stamps, or why there were so many spaces. The stamps stuck in start with four of the Trinity Sunday stamps before moving onto Advent (which is unusual), and some stamps are repeated while others are out of order. Midway through the album a new style of larger stamp takes over; these a more general religious pictures and titles rather than for a specific Sunday. They are however larger than the space for a stamp, so not intended for this album. It seems the stamps were given out on a what was available basis, rather than strictly as intended.
The album measures 110x135mm, and is card fronted (perhaps the back cover is missing). The earlier stamps are 24x38mm and the later ones 30x50mm. It was owned by an Edna Smith of Hugginton or Mugginton (the hand writing is difficult to read).
 
   
This example of the 1934-35 album was collected by Beryl Loftly, of St Peter’s Church, Hethersett. It is in excellent condition but lacks a number of stamps. However in some blank spaces ‘Present’ is written in by hand, so either the school were short of some stamps or Beryl forgot to take her book along and never got the stamps! Inside the back cover the teacher has written “47. A good record as you have a long way to come. Be careful to get your stamps for each Sunday”. The cover illustration is credited to H.W.Forster.
 
A very neat, clean and tidy 1935-36 album, owned by Dorothy Taylor of Owlesbury, a village in Hampshire. Though the cover states 1936 this must mean 1935-36 as she also collected the following three years of Faith Press albums which commence 1936-37. The album and the stamps are similar in style and format to the 1932 edition. It is missing 15 Sunday’s worth of stamps including an eight week run at the end of the year. The artwork is T. Noyes-Lewis work.
Was this the final edition of The Gospel Stamps? That could be the reason why Owlesbury Sunday School changes to another publisher. No later editions dated to later than 1936 are known to me.
 
Unknown Date
This album is assumed to be 1930s from the style, but there are no clues from the stamps or album. The cover is rigid textured card and is illustrated by Thomas Noyes-Lewis (he had illustrated the albums of The Faith Press up to around 1930).Unfortunately the spine binding has worn and the front cover is loose (perhaps repairable). apart from that it is quite clean and tidy. The album was owned by a Dorothy Burton of Back Lane, Nazeing, a small village in Essex. She attended All Saints Church in the village. The stamps are similar to both the 1932 album and the next one listed even more so, but use the smaller format throughout. For this reason I date it later than that example.
 
 
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