Braddock and an Odd Hornsey Church Postcard

This is a postcard I would have liked to buy but someone beat me to it on ebay.

The odd thing about it is the gent in the foreground , because enhancing the overall image resulted in him looking a bit out of place photographically. Not only is his image a different tone to the rest of the photo but he seems rather diminutive compared with the height of the gates and fence. Also, am I imagining it but doesn’t the man look slightly more modern in dress than the 1870s? It was not unknown for early photographers to do a bit of photo editing, in the literal pre-computer sense, and in this instance he probably felt that the scene needed a person in the foreground. The lady in middle distance indicates the fence being about her shoulder height. The following card of further along the path shows it around elbow height to the men loitering there.

As to the viewpoint of the main image, this appears to be from a westerly direction, perhaps alongside what became the High Street, or maybe a footpath from about where Hillfield Avenue now runs:

The final quirks about this card are that it is a Braddock (see Hugh’s previous feature on this photographer) but 1876 is earlier than he was so far known to have been active in Hornsey; it is a “divided back” (address and writing together on back of card) which started to be allowed in UK from 1902; and it was posted in Sussex 1945 to a Crouch End address.