HUNDREDS of postcards showing what Colchester was like at the beginning of the 20th century will go under the hammer next week.

The 800-strong collection which features a wide-variety of shop fronts and images from the army will be auctioned off at Reeman Dansie on Wyncolls Road, Colchester, on Tuesday.

Collectables expert Michael Bowles said he was excited about the lot, which he expected to fetch £1,000 when it is sold off.

He said: “It is a private collection put together by an individual who I think must have either been a Colcestrian or at the very least would have lived in the area.

“It is across seven volumes and this collection shows a really good social history of Colchester.

“The collection includes a lot of shop shop fronts and a good selection of military pictures as well.

“It is just a fantastic cross section of what life would have been like in and around Colchester in the 1900s ranging until the 1920s.”

Mr Bowles said it was rare for even a Colchester-based auctioneers to sell of a lot which was steeped so richly in the town’s history.

He said: “It is obviously something which has taken quite a lot of years to build up - especially because there are 800 different individual postcards in there.

“We will be selling them off all together.

“It is something which really needs to be bought by a local expert or a museum or something like that.

“It is a collection which needs to kept in the borough because it is such a wonderful, local record.

“It is very rare to have something which has such strong links to Colchester.

“Usually in a postcard collection we might find two, three or four out of a few hundred but it is unusual to have so many from Colchester.

“The last one I can remember would six or seven years ago to have something totally made up of cards in and around Colchester.”