A local history enthusiast was flabbergasted when he was looking through his collection of postcards and discovered one which he bought online had been sent by his own mother in 1938.

Colin Mann, of Wheeler Street, Maidstone, has collected around 300 photographs of the Maidstone and Malling area over the years and is particularly interested in places from his childhood.

The 60-year-old went to Scouts in Wrotham and was scouring eBay for images of the village when he came across a postcard from the 1930s featuring London Road long before the M20 ran parallel to it.

Mr Mann, the editor of an online magazine, said it was a spooky moment when he was looking through his collection and just happened to inspect the message on the back of the card.

It reads: “Dear uncle Andy, I am having a lovely time down here and the weather is beautiful. I hope you will have a lovely time next week. Love from Elsie.”

Elsie Frost is Mr Mann’s late mother who regularly travelled from her home in Wimbledon to stay with her family in Kent during the summer holidays. She would have been nine or 10 at the time and died in 2001 aged 73.

Two years after the postcard was sent she was moved to Stansted during the war.

She worked as a telephonist at a telephone exchange and several years later met Mr Mann’s father, Herbert, at the Vigo army camp.

Mr Mann said he bought the postcard so long ago he has no record of who he bought it from.

He added: “I recently bought an image of the former Horse and Groom pub which is being developed into houses and was taken in the same area as the London Road picture some years previously.

"I think subconsciously that’s what made me take a closer look at it when I found it.

“When I realised who had sent it I got a lump in my throat. What are the chances of that happening?”