These lovely old postcards come from a comprehensive collection showing Dorset’s scenic towns and villages.

They were compiled by Marion Snow of Burton Bradstock, who told the Dorset Echo in this archive piece from the past that so many people wrote postcards in the 20th century to prove that they can write.

The postcards on this page show a genteel looking Weymouth, a view of Portland, the village of Osmington Mills, Portland Bill lighthouse and Brunswick Terrace in Weymouth.

Mrs Snow’s father, Reginald Walter Ruff, began to collect postcards in 1905.

She said: “He started it when he was five years old. Many of the postcards are written on and people have sent them to him.”

The album is a delightful collection of images from all over the UK, spanning several years at the beginning of the last century.

Mr Ruff was born in Farnham in Surrey and was ‘an original man of the railway’.

Mrs Snow said: “They moved about quite a bit. His mother was a Dorset person. She came from near Blandford.

“They moved back here when he was five. He lived in Bournemouth for quite a while and I was born in Bournemouth.

“I moved to Chideock, outside Bridport, with my parents. Then from Chideock I moved to Wiltshire, then Abbotsbury, where my husband worked at the gardens, then Burton Bradstock.”

Sadly Mr Ruff died in 1959 at the age of 59. He had a brain tumour and died in Southampton hospital.