With country after country cutting back on postal service and delivery or restricting its business to parcels, London’s Postal Museum offers a welcome reminder of just how important this now disappearing service was in its infancy.
The Museum reminds us, with a wealth of data, displays and artifacts, that a great deal of what we think of as ordinary commerce didn’t—couldn’t—exist before the development of reliable delivery services for letters, magazines, newspapers and more.
A trusted servant might be sent on a long trip with news; word might come from an itinerant priest or merchant, but anything reliable was open only to those who could afford to fund their own; even Henry VIII, the king who in 1516 first appointed a ‘Master of the Posts’ found the cost of maintaining a system of royal messengers onerous.
James I of England and VI of Scotland found the cost worthwhile: one of his first acts was to set up the Royal post to ensure good connections between London and Edinburgh as a way of helping ensure keeping control of both thrones.
His successor, Charles I might be the real founder of the postal service we know today: He opened its use to the general public, although at first postage was paid by the recipient, not the sender. At first, it was run by private contractors, but under Cromwell it became a direct agency, run by his spymaster, who insured all the mail was carefully read before delivery.
Mail going any serious distance in that period was carried by couriers on horseback; the volume wasn’t huge, the speed wasn’t great and, concerningly, the couriers could be quite vulnerable to thieves. As volume increased and the need for a more secure method became clear, a national network of mail coaches grew in the 18th century, some carrying passengers as well as mail, and running on posted schedules, and protected by armed guards.
By 1830, railroads were carrying an increasing amount of the mail, but the service was quick to adopt, and in some cases abandon, a variety of other ways to move the mail. There was even a special service that carried mail out to crew and passengers on ships docked in the Thames. Generations of one family filled that post across 150 years.
But the next big invention for the Royal Mail was something simpler: the first postage stamp, arguably the true foundation of modern mail service.
Up to 1840, the receiver was still paying and there was a massively confusing assortment of rates and rules. A teacher, Rowland Hill, wrote a paper proposing that the system would work a lot better if postage were low but lots of people used it, and easier to do the bookkeeping for if people paid up front. The idea was adopted as the Uniform Penny Post, and the first adhesive postage stamps were issued to prove that the mail had been paid for.
Ironically, the name explains why the stamp was a failure and is now one of the world’s rarest stamps. Within months it was replaced by the Penny Red, because the red cancelation stamp didn’t show up well on the cheaply-printed black stamp and was easy to remove. Thrifty customers soon realized how easy it was to re-use it. Black ink was used to cancel the Penny Red.
The familiar Royal Mail pillar boxes came along soon after as the volume of mail shot up. The first one was installed not in the UK itself, but on the Isle of Jersey in 1852; they were rolled out across the mainland in 1853 and some of the originals can be found here and there, recognizable by Queen Victoria’s VR cypher.
Along the way, the postal service was also put in charge of telephone and telegraph communications, a connection that lasted until 1980.
The Royal Mail was one of Britain’s largest employers for years, and ‘posties’ took on a variety of roles during the two world wars. In both, there were military units recruited entirely from the postal services, and postal workers also took on salvage and rescue work—including salvaging mail from bombed pillar boxes.
But for all the progress we can see, the museum takes a moment with a special exhibit to remember that it also facilitated another aspect of the world it was created in.
Meanwhile, as the volume of mail within London itself grew and grew, and getting it from one post office to another became slower and slower, the post office experimented with other means, including wheeled cars moved through pneumatic tubes powered by huge steam-driven fans, seen above in 1866. That only helped for a few years, and in 1909 the Post Office began building its own subway system, now called Mail Rail.
After wartime delays, Mail Rail opened in 1927 with a route that covered all of London’s major mail-sorting stations and its mainline railway terminals. The trains were driverless, controlled from the platforms along the way, where sacks were added and removed at considerable speed to keep the system moving. The cars themselves ran at about 30 mph.
When Mail Rail shut down in 2003, workers left these shelves and lockers as they were, perhaps already knowing that Mail Rail’s days weren’t completely done. The shutdown was controversial; Post Office officials said it had become uneconomic, while others, including London’s then government argued that it would not be if it were used at full capacity.
The tunnels and stations lay dormant until the creation of the British Postal Museum and Archive, founded in 2013 and opened in 2017, with Mail Rail as one of its attractions. The trip uses a pair of specially-designed trains built for visitors rather than mailsacks, and includes a number of station stops with narration and video projected on the walls.
Like all good museums, the Postal Museum has a gift shop, with a wide variety of merchandise, including many forms of pillar boxes, mugs, games and even a few postcards. Ironically, when I asked to buy stamps for my dozen or so postcards being mailed to the U.S., the gift shop had only three in stock—and incorrect information about the rate. A major post office nearby does not sell stamps.
I was lucky on my third try, but it’s clear that mail no longer has the world’s attention—it’s a good thing we can still find it in a museum!
Nuts and Bolts
- The museum is at 15-20 Phoenix Place, London
- Open Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-17:00; last Mail Rail ride at 16:00
- Trains: 10-15 minute walk from Russell Square, Chancery Lane and Farringdon tube stations
- Tickets include one-year unlimited access; prices range from £11 for child 2-15 to £18.50 for 25 and above with special rates for disabilities.
- Mail Rail requires a separate timed reservation, but is included with ticket
