General Post Office, London

The old Post Office in Lombard Street, c.1800.

According to John Stow, a post office was first established in the City of London in Cloak Lane in the second half of the 16th century.[4] In the 17th century the office moved into the Black Swan, a licensed premises in Bishopsgate; this however was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. The office moved out to Covent Garden temporarily during the rebuilding of the City after the fire, before being re-established in 1680 in a mansion in Lombard Street (which it rented from Sir Robert Vyner). The General Post Office remained there for the next century and a half; however the increased employment of mail coaches towards the end of the 18th century caused difficulties as they had to queue in the street.[4]

The New General Post Office, London, 1829, showing the main west façade. (Painted by James Pollard).

With the post office having outgrown its premises in Lombard Street a site was sought for a new building.[5] An 1815 Act of Parliament authorised commissioners to identify a suitable location, and to pay compensation to the owners of properties on the site.[6] A parcel of land on the east side of St. Martin's Le Grand was chosen; however the clearance and preparation of the densely-occupied site took several years, and it was not until 1825 that work began in earnest on the new building.

Smirke's new General Post Office opened on 23 September 1829. It was the UK's second purpose-built post office;[7] Dublin's GPO (completed in 1818 to a design by Francis Johnston and still in use) predates it.[8] The new Post Office was 'one of the largest public edifices now existing in the City of London' in 1829.[9]

The Post Office was built in the Grecian style with Ionic porticoes along the main (west) front, and was 389 feet (119 m) long and 130 feet (40 m) wide and 64 feet (20 m) high.[6] Above a basement storey of granite it was brick-built, but encased on all sides in Portland stone.[10] The building's main façade had a central hexastyle Greek Ionic portico with a pediment, and two tetrastyle porticoes without pediments at each end. Above the main entrance was a large chiming clock (by Vulliamy) with an external and internal dial, which governed timekeeping within the building.[11]

A North East View of the General Post Office, with the Royal Mails (& Carts) preparing to Start. (Painted by James Pollard, 1832).

The General Post Office was built in the era of the mail coach, with a driveway leading around the back of the building to a courtyard on the north side where the coaches would assemble. Each night, from all around the country, London-bound mail coaches would set off at different times, so as to arrive at St Martin's Le Grand between 5 and 6 o'clock in the morning;[6] the mail was then unloaded and sorted, ready for delivery at 8am. Then in the evening, the coaches were loaded with sacks of mail destined for the provinces; they all set off at 8pm in different directions, each following their own set route, progressively dropping off mail bags at every post town on the way to their final destinations.[6] Mail for destinations overseas was mostly taken to Falmouth or Dover to be loaded on to packet boats.

In between the arrival and departure of the mail coaches, red-painted mail carts would come and go all through the day, collecting and delivering mail within the London postal area. Working alongside the mail carts were riding-boys, who would carry sacks of mail on horseback. (Usually aged between 13 and 16, they would often go on to drive the mail carts when they were older).[12] The carts and riding-boys would collect mail from, and deliver it to, 'receiving houses' all round London. By 1850 the London District Office was carrying out ten collections and deliveries a day, six days a week, in the central London area (within a 3-mile radius of St Martin's Le Grand) and between three and five collections in the suburbs (within a 12-mile radius).[13] There were no deliveries or collections of any kind on Sundays.

The Grand Public Hall, 1845 (looking towards the Foster Lane entrance).

Behind the central portico of the Post Office was a Grand Public Hall, forming a public thoroughfare from St Martin's-le-Grand to Foster Lane; it measured 80 ft (24 m) by 60 ft (18 m) and had aisles on either side separated from the centre by rows of ionic columns.[14] Members of the public could post letters and other items from inside the hall through boxes in the wall, from where they would fall into hoppers and be loaded into trolleys to be taken to the sorting offices beyond. There were also windows and offices where payments could be made.[12] Each day, shortly before 6pm (the deadline for the Inland post), there would always be a last-minute rush of people with letters and newspapers to post; the windows above the slots were then opened to facilitate delivery, but were always closed on the sixth stroke of the clock (after which items could be posted at the 'late' window, but only with payment of a surcharge). Charles Dickens described the daily 6 o'clock rush in a descriptive and detailed article on the workings of the Post Office in 1850.[12]

People surging into the Public Hall to post their letters and newspapers, shortly before the 6pm deadline.

The Grand Public Hall divided the building in two: personnel to the south dealt mainly with the London post, while those to the north dealt mainly with the national post. (Up until 1855 two separately-constituted corps of letter-carriers worked from the two separate halves of the building: the blue-liveried London District carriers on the one hand, and the red-uniformed General Post carriers on the other.)[10] A tunnel and conveyor system beneath the Grand Public Hall linked the two halves of the building.[14]

In 1829 the three 'great divisions' of the Post Office were:[9]

• The Inland Office (also called the General Post) for sending letters around the UK outside London;
• The Foreign Office, for sending letters overseas using packet boats;
• The London District Office (also called the Two-penny Post) for sending letters within the London area (successor to the London Penny Post established by William Dockwra in 1680).

The Inland Office was based in the northern half of the building. Immediately adjacent to the Public Hall on this side were the rooms for receiving newspapers, inland letters and ship letters posted by members of the public through the slots; beyond these were large halls for the sorting, marking and despatching of items, the largest of which was the Inland Letter Office.

The Inland Letter Office at the General Post Office in 1845

The Inland Letter Office, centrally-placed within the northern half of the building, was a sizeable chamber measuring 90 ft (27 m) by 56 ft (17 m).[15] It was here that letters for and from the provinces were received, stamped, counted and sorted. The room was a hive of activity at the start of the day, when coaches arrived from around the country laden with letters for London; and at the end of the day, when the letters from London were sorted and stamped before being bagged, and loaded on coaches for delivery to provincial post offices all round the country.[6]

Alongside the Inland Letter Office to the west was the Letter-carriers' Office (103 ft (31 m) by 35 ft (11 m)), with elegant iron galleries and spiral staircases.[16][17] Here, each morning, the letter-carriers would sort their designated letters into different 'walks' before setting off to deliver them. Letters destined for addresses in central London were delivered by the Inland department's own letter-carriers, while those for the suburbs were sent on the under-floor conveyor to the London District office for delivery.[12] In the evening, the Letter-carriers' Office was used for the sorting of large numbers of newspapers for overnight despatch).[18]

On the east side of the Inland Letter Office (with an entrance from Foster Lane) was a large vestibule, where the incoming and outgoing letter bags were received from and despatched to the mail coaches. Before leaving the building they were placed in the custody of the Mail-Guards, who were armed and accompanied the bags on the coaches to ensure safe delivery. The Mail-Guards had rooms, including an armoury, in the basement of the building.[6]

Other rooms in the northern half of the building included the Dead Letter Office, the Missing Letter Office and the Blind Office (for deciphering illegible addresses). The Superintending President of the Inland Office had his office at the northernmost end of the building, overlooking the yard.[18] Connected with the Inland department was the Ship Letter Office, which transported mail by sea to certain destinations using privately-owned ships (at a cheaper rate than the Government-owned packet boats, which were overseen by a different office in the other half of the building).

Adjoining the Public Hall on the south side of the building was the Foreign Letter Office, from which letters were sent to a great variety of overseas destinations by way of the packet service. Its clerks were provided with overnight accommodation on the second floor, so as to be available for duty whenever letters might arrive from overseas, day or night. The Foreign department also maintained its own team of letter-carriers, to deliver mail to addresses in central London.

Also in the southern half of the building were the offices of the London District Office or 'Two-penny Post', which occupied three large rooms to the east of the Foreign Office (the receiving room, sorters' office and carriers' office).[9] Measuring just 46 ft (14 m) by 24 ft (7.3 m), the London District sorting office was considerably smaller than its Inland counterpart.[9]

The London District Office had its own entrance on the east side, by which letter bags were conveyed to and from the waiting mail carts and riding-boys. There was also stabling provided on this side of the building for a limited number of horses.[12] The London District office operated in a similar way to the Inland office, but on a more constant basis as letters were received and despatched at regular times all through the day. From St Martin's Le Grand the letters went out in sealed bags to the receiving houses, where letter-carriers would be on hand to deliver them (at this time the London District Office had over a hundred receiving houses across London, and the Inland Office around 50).[19]

The Receiver General and the Accountant General also had their offices on the south side of the Public Hall; [6] the poste restante office for London was also located there. A corridor next to the main entrance on the south side led to a 'grand staircase', which provided access to rooms on the first floor (principally the Board Room and the Secretary's office).[9] The Secretary of the Post Office, who was the chief administrative officer of the GPO, was also provided with an official residence at the south-west corner of the building.[20]

Almost as soon as it had opened, the building was found to be short of space. As early as 1831 a gallery was inserted into the main Inland sorting office to provide extra capacity.[12] In 1836, following the death of Sir Francis Freeling, the Secretary's residence in the south-west corner of the building was given over to office use.

General Post Office, St Martin's le Grand by T. Picken, 1852. A mail van is waiting in the yard (left) and a mail cart approaches along the street (right).

Within a decade of the building's opening, rail had replaced road as the principal means of distribution around the country, consigning the mail coach to history.[4] The Inland Office now used horse-drawn mail-vans to convey sacks of letters to the railway termini where they were loaded on to trains or Travelling Post Offices.[10]

Following the introduction of the uniform penny post in 1840, the number of letters passing through the building increased substantially.[19] To help with the increased volume of post, a new sorting office was built[21] immediately above the old one, 'suspended from a strong arched iron girder roof by iron rods' (a solution which, though ingenious, left the principal room below entirely deprived of natural light).[12] At around the same time a transit system was installed whereby 'two endless chains, worked by a steam-engine, carry, in rapid succession, a series of shelves, each holding four or five men and their letter-bags, which are thus raised to various parts of the building'.[14] The upper room took over the function of the dual-purpose letter-carriers' office / newspaper sorting office, allowing the inland letter office to expand into the vacated space below.[12][22]

The Money Order Office had been established in 1838, in two small rooms at the north end of the building. In the 1840s it operated from a large room adjoining the Public Hall on the south side near the main entrance; but it soon outgrew these premises and in 1846 the Money Order Office was provided with new premises (designed by Sydney Smirke) just across the road at No. 1 Aldersgate Street.

At around the same time the Foreign Letter Office was made an adjunct to the Inland Letter Office (both administratively and physically): an arch was inserted in the north wall of the Inland Office beyond which several rooms were knocked together to create a new sorting office for the 'Colonial and Foreign Division' (measuring 30 ft (9.1 m) by 18 ft (5.5 m)), which was linked by way of a mail-hoist to the Ship-letter Office above.[12]

On the south side of the building, the London District office then expanded into spaces vacated by the Foreign Office; before long the London District sorting office had more than doubled in size.[12]

Reforms undertaken in the 1850s, when the Duke of Argyll was Postmaster General, helped ease the overcrowding somewhat: as well as amalgamating the separate corps of letter-carriers (and their separate receiving houses), in 1856 he divided London into ten postal districts, each with its own district office able to receive and distribute its own mail (whereas previously all London's letters had had to pass through St Martin's Le Grand for sorting and redistribution).[10]

The crowded sorting office in 1869.

Nevertheless the ongoing expansion of the work of the Post Office meant that the building was soon once again occupied well beyond its intended capacity; The Times reported in 1860 that "rooms have been overcrowded, closets turned into offices, extra rooms hung by tie rods to the girders of the ceiling".[3] Work requiring bright light was conducted in poorly illuminated areas, odours spread from the lavatories to the kitchens, while a combination of gas lighting and poor ventilation meant that workers often felt nauseous.

From 1868, the GPO experimented with the services of the London Pneumatic Despatch Company, which operated a pneumatic tube from Euston railway station for the delivery of mail, but the experiment was unsuccessful and terminated in 1874.

In 1870, with space in the building remaining at a premium, the Grand Public Hall was closed and converted into another additional sorting room.[5] Slots were then installed under the portico for members of the public to post their letters.

Illustration of the planned new building (GPO West) in 1872.

In 1874 a new building, designed by James Williams, was opened on the western side of St. Martin's Le Grand: GPO West.[23] It had originally been designed to house the main administrative offices and senior GPO officials on the lower two floors, and the Post Office Savings Bank on the upper two floors (leaving the old building to focus on letters and newspapers);[24] but following the nationalisation of the UK's electrical telegraph companies in 1870, the upper floors were given over to telegraphic equipment and the building became known as the Central Telegraph Office (CTO).[25] The instrument rooms employed nearly a thousand people at a time sending and receiving messages; the basement served as a battery room, with space for 40,000 cells.[19]

Pneumatic-tube room in GPO West

As well as using wire connections, the CTO was linked to 38 different branch offices around central London using a network of pneumatic tubes (inherited from the Electric Telegraph Company and subsequently expanded). Three steam engines in the north courtyard powered the entire system (generating a pressure and vacuum for sending and receiving), fed by four boilers in the south courtyard.[26]

Map showing the two Post Office buildings (West and East) in 1888.

Not long after GPO West opened still more space was needed: in 1882 it expanded to the west, being linked to an adjacent building via bridges across Roman Bath Street; and in 1884 an additional storey was built on the top.[27] In 1892 it was said to be the largest telegraph station in the world.[26] By this time the Central Hall on the ground floor had been converted to serve as the main pneumatic tube room, while the second, third and fourth floors were occupied by the instrument rooms of the electric telegraph systems.

Meanwhile, in 1880, a new building opened a quarter of a mile to the south in Queen Victoria Street, which was given the designation GPO South.[27] It accommodated the Savings Bank, the money order and postal order departments and a fast-growing telephone department. In 1890 it expanded into another building immediately to the north, to which it was linked by bridges over Knightrider Street. In the early 20th century the money order department and savings bank moved out to other locations in London, while GPO South became London's first telephone exchange and offices for the GPO's London Telephone Service.

Drawing of the future GPO North.

In 1895, GPO North was opened immediately to the north of GPO West (and connected to it across Angel Street by a second-floor footbridge), as the GPO continued to expand.[28] Known as Post Office Headquarters (PHQ), it was designed by Henry Tanner to house the Postmaster General and the GPO's administrative departments (the Secretary's Office, the Accountant General's Office, the Solicitor's Office, etc.). To make way for the new building the old Bull and Mouth Inn was demolished, where at one time the mail coaches had been harnessed to their horses ready to collect the mail from the Post Office across the road.[4]

The building had a large courtyard at its centre, entered via covered passageways at either end. The outer arched entrances were topped with sculptural likenesses of two recent Postmasters General: H. C. Raikes (facing St Martin's Le Grand) and Arnold Morley (overlooking King Edward Street); while the equivalent arches on the courtyard side had representations of David Plunket and George Shaw Lefevre (recent First Commissioners of Works).[25] The Postmaster General had his office on the ground floor, on the King Edward Street side; the Permanent Secretary and his staff were on the first floor. Beneath the courtyard was a large basement designed to hold the Post Office archives.[25]

GPO East (right), GPO West (left) and GPO North (centre-left), c.1900.

Meanwhile, the original General Post Office (which, to avoid confusion, had been renamed GPO East) continued to deal with letters. When the parcel post was being introduced 1882, a sorting office was swiftly constructed for it by James Williams in the Post Office yard;[29] then in 1889 the parcel-post sorting office was relocated to Mount Pleasant.[30] In 1893 an additional storey was added to the top of Robert Smirke's GPO East.[31] In 1900 the Inland and Newspaper sections of the General Post Office were transferred to a new building on the Mount Pleasant site, leaving GPO East to focus on the sorting of London and Foreign correspondence.[32]

When the Central London Railway was constructed in 1900, a nearby station was named Post Office (in 1937 it was renamed St Paul's).