Opening times: Tuesday to Sunday 10.00am – 17.00pm
Entry: (Museum only); Adult £20.50, Child (2 – 17) £11.00, Royal Mail / Post Office employees £2.00. Mail Rail Top-Up £7.50 per person. Sorted Postal Play Space £5.00 child, £2.50 adult.
Access: Local parking available for a charge. Alternatively, King’s Cross St Pancras, Russell Square, Farrington, and Chancery Lane underground stations all less than a mile away.
Annie and I were back in London for a few days, one of the objects of our trip being to visit the British Museum, which neither of us had ever been to. We picked a hotel in the vicinity, and then had a look on Google Maps to see what else was in the area. One of the things that leapt out was the Postal Museum, which I assumed would be no more than a collection of stamps, post boxes, and uniforms, but as I do have a fondness for niche attractions – and it would provide a contrast to the labyrinthine British Museum – it went on the to-do list.
After checking in to our hotel Annie and I wandered along to the museum, only to find that all tickets for that day were sold out. We had taken the precaution of pre-booking our British Museum tickets but it didn’t occur to me for a second to do the same with the Postal Museum. So much for it being a niche market! As it transpired, schools were out for the Easter holidays, and whoever designed the Postal Museum ensured it would appeal to young children. Not only was the museum itself accessible, there was also the Mail Rail, a small underground train located across the road from the main building, and the Sorted! Postal Play Space, an immersive play area for one to eight year olds also located in the Rail Mail building. Net result: the place was hoaching, and Annie and I booked tickets for the following day. Note: Additional entry charges apply for the Mail Rail and Sorted! play area – see details above.
Mural by ATMA (Matt Dufour), painted 2018, on the side of the main Postal Museum building. The figure of the postman was taken from a 1930s photograph, and a carrier pigeon and postal aeroplane can also be seen, along with the iconic Penny Black stamp. The Postal Museum is a relative newcomer in terms of London attractions, beginning life as the British Postal Museum & Archive in 2004, changing to its current name in 2017.
The Mail Rail is precisely that, a subterranean railway that transported the mail across London via a maze of mostly now disused tunnels in vehicles not unlike the one in the above photo. This train was designed to carry mail rather than people so can make for a rather cramped ride. I’m over six feet tall and was very contorted and uncomfortable during the ride, but it was do-able as it only lasted about fifteen minutes. However, it is definitely not recommended for anyone with claustrophobia as apart the lack of space inside the train the ride also goes through some tunnels that are about seven feet at their widest and there are moments of total darkness. A brief history of the Post Office and the Mail Rail is projected on the tunnel walls at various stops along the way. As predicted, the museum does feature stamps, post boxes and uniforms, but how mail was transported is also covered in detail, and a variety of vehicles over and above the Mail Rail highlighted. Above is a restored 18th-century horse drawn mail coach, the brainchild of a Bath theatre owner called John Palmer. He financed an experimental mail coach journey from Bristol to London to convince sceptical Post Office bosses of the merits of his idea. The coach left Bristol at 4pm on 2 August 1784 and arrived in London at 8am the next day, a 16-hour trip that previously had taken 38. By the end of 1875 there were services to Dover, Portsmouth, Poole, Exeter, and Carlisle amongst others, and the following year – the same year Palmer was made Surveyor and Comptroller General of the Post Office – a London to Edinburgh service was also introduced. Not all delivery vehicles took off. This Hen and Chicks pentacycle was introduced in 1882, and although it allowed for the carrying of bulkier parcels as well as letters it was only popular in Horsham, West Sussex, where its inventor lived. I can’t remember ever seeing one of these blue air mail post-boxes on the streets; perhaps they had been phased out by the 1960s, or perhaps my memory is a bit wonky. The first scheduled airmail service began on 9 September 1911 and flew from Hendon to Windsor, a distance of about twenty miles. Longer airmail routes were steadily introduced over subsequent years, culminating in a regular service between London and Brisbane being introduced In December 1934. The journey of 12,700 miles was the world’s longest air route and took 12 days. The car in the above photo is a Morris Minor Van from 1935. The Post Office introduced a fleet of delivery vans during the 1920s. Only two manufacturers produced vehicles that could be serviced nationwide, Ford and Morris. The Post Office went with Ford until pressure from Parliament forced a switch to Morris, a British company.The Post Office releases a series of themed stamps each year. At the time of writing the current set is dedicated to the Lord of the Rings movies, with other recent examples including Concorde, Monopoly, and Monty Python. This practice was only introduced in 1965, with most previous stamps simply depicting the reigning monarch except for occasional commemorative editions. Themed stamps were proposed by then-Postmaster General Tony Benn and designer David Gentleman, with the above display showing a small selection of subjects covered since.
Destination or Diversion?
As previously stated, hats must be doffed to the designers of the Postal Museum for having taken a potentially dry subject and turned it into something fun and accessible for children while presenting enough social and industrial history to engage adult visitors. However, the sheer number of screaming kids meant we only spent an hour or so there, but I could easily imaging that time doubling had the place been a bit quieter. Therefore, I’m calling the Postal Museum a destination.
An exhibition celebrating forty years of Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s Jolly Postman books proved a big hit with younger visitors. There were three books in the series: The Jolly Postman or Other People’s Letters (1986), The Jolly Christmas Postman (1991) and The Jolly Pocket Postman (1995). I was completely unfamiliar with the character – fair enough, I was never the target market – but the series was obviously popular, with the first book alone selling over six million copies.
