A little bit of Post Office history on New Bridge Street …… and a question

Now this is the former Parcel Post Office which straddled New Bridge Street, Moreton Street and the river.

It is one of those buildings you pass, wonder what it might have been and pass on with a note to find out its origins, but never do.

According to one source, it was opened for business in 1894 and its close “proximity to Victoria and Exchange Stations enabled easy transfer of parcels from the trains. It was closed as a parcel sorting centre in the 1930s when it was replaced by a larger building in Newton Street”.*

It is a Grade II listed building and has been converted into residential use.

The initials VR are still there to see high up on the New Bridge Street side, and was constructed by H M Office of Works to a design by William Thomas Oldreive, who had  spent time in Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna and Paris, in 1886, where he made “a particular study of post office buildings, notably Guadet's new Hotel des Postes in Paris and the General Post Office in Hamburg. As a result of his study he was later appointed architect for provincial post offices in England and Wales. Works included Post Offices at Hyde, 1899-1900”.*

Now I am fascinated by the later history of the building, because despite having been closed in 1930 it still appears as such on the 1952 OS map of Manchester and Salford, and so begs the question of what happened to it during the later part of the last century.

Added to which other sources suggest Newton Street opened in 1908, and Posty David thinks it was doing the business by the 1920s.

So more research.

But some will know and offer up information on the "missing years", leaving me just to observe that Moreton Street is now just a shadow of its former self and renamed Mirabel Street.

Location, Salford

Pictures; the former Parcel Post Office, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Parcel Post Office Mirabel Street and New Bridge Street, Architects of Greater Manchester 1800-1940, https://manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/buildings/parcel-post-office-mirabel-street-and-new-bridge-street-manchester