Caught in the grip of the instant message, I mourn the loss of the written one, no matter how brief.

Even the humble postcard appears to be in a decline. These days I only ever receive one from my much travelled sister in law and this is probably only because she doesn’t have my mobile number.

While postcards might soon be a thing of the past, the sale of antique ones continues to flourish. And like me there are buyers who are more interested in the message on the back than the view on the front.

In the news this week, one lucky couple found a collection of postcards half buried in the sand at Weston super Mare. Dating from 1914-18 the postcards were from Private Arthur Lyddon who served in the West Somerset Yeomanry and the Somerset Light Infantry, to his sweetheart Mabel Langford. Written from WWI battlefields in France and Africa it is still unknown how these priceless items came to be washed up on the beach at Weston.

Closer to home, messages survive from the St John’s at Lydiard Park and I’m not talking purple prose here. Sir Walter St John and his wife the Lady Johanna were the 17th century custodians of Lydiard Park. As a long serving MP for Wootton Bassett and Wiltshire, Sir Walter chose to live at his Battersea home, using the Elizabethan manor house at Lydiard Tregoze as a holiday home.

The estate was managed by the couple’s steward Thomas Hardyman with whom Lady Johanna kept up a stream of correspondence, sending for provisions from the home farm to stock her Battersea larder.

The Friends of Lydiard Tregoz have preserved what might have seemed at the time fairly inconsequential housekeeping letters and notes but which today give a unique glimpse of 17th century life at Lydiard Park.

One of my favourites is an extract from a letter from Johanna enquiring about her children who were recuperating from illness at Lydiard.

“Bid them have a care of the children and not to let them pick ther noses nor doe any other thing for which I use to chide them.”

Johanna died at her Battersea home in 1704 aged 75, her letters surviving more than three hundred years. Having just deleted the messages in my sent box no one will know I missed the bus twice this week – no loss you might say, but will anyone know what a bus is in 2310! Quite!