A pint …… four stamps ……… and an option on a telegram please

There are many ways of saving a redundant public building.

Now I don’t share the politics of the owner of Wetherspoons, but I must acknowledge the company has saved more than a few iconic buildings which otherwise would have been demolished for a heap of town houses, or apartments.

But it has survived.

The blue plaque which sits beside the main entrance, tells me that it was designed by H.M. Office of Works in 1914 and is a listed Grade ll building.

 

I have yet to find out when it closed, but I know that before it was built the Post Office was on the opposite  side of Witton Street.

I do know that it was "A timber-framed building designed to be lifted up in the event of subsidence. It has recessed plaster panels, and a tiled roof. The building is in three storeys plus an attic. Its architectural style is Elizabethan with ornate decoration. Above the entrance is an oriel window"*

To which I can add that "It was built between 1914-19, as the town’s main post office.  Although the building was finished in 1915 it was not opened and used because of the First World War taking place.  Instead it was left closed until 1919, after the end of the war, when it was finally opened.  It was the town’s ‘largest liftable building’.  It became a public house in the 1990s and takes its name from the world’s first-ever adhesive postage stamp".**

*Listed buildings of Cheshire; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listed_buildings_in_Northwich

**Northwich Townscape Heritage Progect, Listed Buildings, https://www.northwich-th.co.uk/buildings/listed-buildings/

 

Location; Northwich

Pictures; the former Post Office, Witton Street, Northwich, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

What you find in your cellar …………

 Never throw anything away is by and large a lifestyle choice I have followed for my entire life.

It allows me to rediscover odd ephemera, which have lain for decades in “safe places”, so safe I had forgotten they were there.

And so, it is with the Newsletter of The British Postal Museum and Archive, from February 2014. 

Just why I had signed up for the publication is now lost in time, nor do I have other copies and this one has sat in the cellar for I guess nine years, along with a heap of books, and lots of photocopied sheets of newspapers, and archive material.

I had gone looking for my collection of school history textbooks, which proved elusive, but I turned up this solitary newsletter, and what a good read it was.

Included in the sixteen pages were articles about the Museum, lists of up-and-coming talks, stories from the history of the Post Office and dips into the archive.

So all in all a good find, but one which perhaps needs a new home, and so I will offer it up to my “posty” friend, David Harrop, whose collection of Postal History memorabilia must rank as one of the largest and interesting in the country.

And that is that other than to say the article by Emma Harper who was the curator back in 2014 on a truncheon issued to GPO staff in 1848, is a gem.

Location; our cellar

Pictures; Interior of Travelling Post Office, 1935, framed artwork for a poster. Artist Charlton, George, Post Office 109/375, and Mt Favourite Object, Emma, Harper, from Newsletter of The British Postal Museum and Archive, from February 2014

*The British Postal Museum and Archive, https://www.postalmuseum.org/

A Lifeboat procession ......... a collection of postal workers ...... and something new

So, I wonder what these men of the Post Office thought about dressing up in the summer of 1907 for the procession to mark Lifeboat Saturday. *

Or just who got to choose who dressed up as a Post Mistress through the ages.

The chap imitating a post box seems happy enough but the onerous task of pretending to be the Postmaster General seems too much for his colleague who looks into the far distance.  He may well have felt the part with the embroidered lettering PMG and walking stick, but there is a hint that he is either very uncomfortable playing the part or such a role is below his dignity.

Of course, we will never know but together the team seem a bit abashed at their contribution which celebrates the history of the Postal Service.

And so they should, because my old friend David Harrop, he of all things postal, informs me that behind them is one of the first mechanised postal vans, marking that transition from horse to petrol.

To this I can add from my Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, "that around 1904 the Royal mail introduced their Rapid Transit Mail Delivery using a motorised tricycle and in 1907,  the first motor vehicle entered Royal Mail service - this was a 2.5 tonne lorry called the Maudslay Stores Number 1 (the first vehicles were stores vehicles rather than mail vehicles). The vehicle was in service for 18 years during which it covered over 300,000 miles”.

All of which means that this picture postcard is quite a find.

And that is all I have to say, except that the first Lifeboat collection happened here in Manchester in 1891, following a disaster when five years earlier, 27 men from Southport and St Anne’s died while trying to rescue sailors from the stricken vessel the Mexico.**

Location; Ipswich, 1907

Picture; Lifeboat Saturday, Ipswich, 1907, from the collection of David Harrop

*1891 First Street Collection, RNLI, https://rnli.org/about-us/our-history/timeline/1891-first-street-collection

** Royal Mail Graces Guide to British Industrial History https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Royal_Mail#:~:text=1907%20The%20first%20motor%20vehicle,it%20covered%20over%20300%2C000%20miles

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

100 things I never want to repeat ....... with apologies to the Post Office.

Now I have to say that coming across these three Post Office wall boxes was the highlight of an otherwise dismal walk around a place I won’t name or say any more about.

Suffice to say on a day when the sun was cracking the paving stones we drove north out of the city and while we enjoyed the scenery, had a good chat, there was truth in that old comment "it is better to travel than to arrive".

Still I got to see these three and that was a bonus.

Location; I cannot tell.

Picture; three Post Office wall boxes, 2018, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

That red box on a wall at Edge Lane ...... the correction

Now yesterday I ran a story on a post box on Edge Lane, which featured the pictures of Robert Williamson and how it came to be restored to working order with the help of David Harrop.

The box is on a wall on the corner of Edge Lane and Hampton Road.

I was pleased with the story and with the response, particularly as people nominated their own one which were all relatively close by.

But I misled you, and Ian has corrected me with, “technically the box at Edge Lane is not a pillar box, but a wall box, designed to be inserted in a wall. 

Pillar boxes are the tall round ones or the 6-sided Victorian ones known as "Penfolds" [after their designer]. 

Readers may be interested in the work of the Letter Box Study Group, the world’s leading experts on post boxes. 

Their website is at: www.LBSG.org”.

All of which is as it should be, and a thank you to Ian.

Locations Chorlton

Picture; the Post Office Wall Box, 2014 from the collection of Robert Williamson

*The story of that Victorian pillar box on Edge Lane, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/the-story-of-that-victorian-pillar-box.html#comment-form

The story of that Victorian pillar box on Edge Lane

Now I like these two pictures of that post-box on the corner of Edge Lane and Hampton Road.

They were taken by Robert Williamson a few years ago, who asked if it was the oldest pillar box in Chorlton and I rather think it is.

My old friend David Harrop thinks so suggesting that it dates from the 1870s and he should know given that he has a large collection of memorabilia from both world wars and more particularly from the history of the Post Office.

Nor is that quite all, because David has a special connection with this pillar box.

Back in the 1990s he was working in the Facilities Branch of the Post Office which was responsible for the siting and maintenance of post boxes in Greater Manchester.

By then our Victorian box had become redundant replaced by a new one attached to a lamp post nearby. 

And to add insult to injury it had lost its door.

On discovering the sad plight of Queen Victoria’s best he instigated a search and the door was found in a garden restored to its rightful place which in turn led to the reinstatement of the said oldest pillar box in Chorlton.

He tells me that people are very sensitive about the position of their local pillar boxes and when the branch moved the one from outside Salford Fire Station it caused quite a storm despite only being moved 30 or so yards.

All of which leaves me to say that ours was made by Smith and Hawkes of Birmingham and given David’s interest in all things posty you won’t be surprised to know that in his collection he has a door from a Victorian pillar box.

Now that door isn’t on display in his permanent exhibition in the Remembrance Lodge at Southern Cemetery but there are lots of interesting things to see from post cards and medals from the Great War to a pillar box salvaged after the Coventry Blitz.

David was insistent I should go down to Edge Lane and take a picture but Robert has kindly let me use his.

So a winner all round, and for those wanting a bit more local history our box will have arrived on Edge Lane sometime in the 1870s reflecting that suburban creep which had seen fine new villas constructed by the well to do spreading up from the station at Stretford.

But that is another story.
Bit in the meantime I received a correction to the story, Ian has pointed out that, "technically the box at Edge Lane is not a pillar box, but a wall box, designed to be inserted in a wall. 

Pillar boxes are the tall round ones or the 6-sided Victorian ones known as "Penfolds" [after their designer]. 

Readers may be interested in the work of the Letter Box Study Group, the worlds leading experts on post boxes. Their website is at: www.LBSG.org".

Thank you Ian

Pictures the Edge Lane pillar box, 2014 from the collection of Robert Williamson

Our history through the post,........ the British Postal Museum & Archive

Now I have been a fan of the British Postal Museum and Archive since they helped me out with some research into the type of early telegraph system which operated in the township on the Row in the mid 19th century.

They can be accessed at http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/ and they produce a wonderful news letter. Mine arrived today and contains a review of the BBC Radio 4 The People’s Post which I featured last year, in a story about the Postal workers Strike, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2011/12/postal-workers-strike-of-1890-and.html and articles on The Great Train Robbery, the Culture of Letters, the history of Christmas cards, and the History of the GPO Film Unit.

And now they have a blog at http://postalheritage.wordpress.com/ My favourite so far is the story posted on Janaury 23 2012 on the GPO film Night Mail

Picture; Night Mail from the blog of the British Postal Museum & Archive