Rise and decline of Plymouth’s postal service

The history of the General Post Office in Plymouth, reflecting the national picture, stretches back to the the 17th century, but, as with the national story, the activities of the Post Office did not really take off until the 19th century.

At the beginning of the 19th century Plymouth’s post office was situated in Bilbury Street. Mary Rivers was the local postmistress; she celebrated her 63rd birthday in 1800, and yet remained in office until her death 33 years later.

The Bilbury Street Office was a fairly modest affair. Mrs Rivers had one assistant and there was only one postman for the whole of the town. Although there were about 25,000 people then living in Plymouth, the volume of mail was low and there was only one delivery per day.

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There was also, at this time, a ‘Navy Post Office’, which had been set up following a request from Mrs Rivers. She had written to the GPO complaining of the difficulties of hiring watermen to deliver post to and receive mail from the ships in the main anchorages around the port.

So called because of the nature of its business and the fact that it was originally operated from the Navy Hotel, on the Barbican, this office had a somewhat chequered career in the early years of the 19th century.

Gradually, though, it became necessary to step everything up a gear as more and more people made use of the postal service.

Once again, this reflected the national picture, but the growth was far from even and in 1837 Parliament appointed a select committee to look into the widespread demands for postal reform. Out of this came Rowland’s Penny Postage Act of 1839, which led to the introduction of a uniform rate of one penny for all letters up to half an ounce. (Prior to this, the average charge for sending letters out of London, for example, had been nine times that).

Within ten years, the new measures had brought about a four-fold increase in the amount of mail generated in the country. The effects of this growth were felt all around the country. In 1845, the Bilbury Street Post Office was enlarged, and two years afterwards work began on a new office in Whimple Street.

Built at a cost of £3,000 and privately paid for, Whimple Street Post Office was designed by local architect Oswald Arthur and opened for business in 1848.

Doubtless quite adequate for its various uses when first opened, it was not long before this building, which still stands on the corner of Whimple Street and St Andrew’s Street, was considered to be far too small. It was not just the extra burden of the post, either, the Money Order Office had also been set up in 1840, Penny Savings Banks had been added to the services provided in 1861, and in 1870 the Telegraphic Office was connected to the Post Office.

Around that time, as well, another novelty arrived to further trouble the postman – the picture postcard. First introduced in Austria in 1869, these quickly became firm favourites the world over.

It comes as no surprise, then, that in 1874 people were calling for a bigger post office in Plymouth. At that time, the space allotted ‘for the ordinary attendance of the public’ within the post office measured just 21ft by 9ft.

As to the rest of the building, it was used, at various times of the day and night, by over 45 clerks, 34 postmen, 55 telegraph officers and 30 boy messengers: all squeezed in to 2,620 square feet in Whimple Street.

An article, supporting the campaign for a move to bigger premises, in the Western Morning News on October 12, 1874, spoke of the unhealthy conditions such overcrowding caused. In those pre-television and radio days, news travelled fastest by telegraph and the WMN went on to give this graphic description of the news gathering in this stressful environment: “If anyone desires to be convinced of these facts, let him obtain permission to look in at the instrument room door some summer’s night when Parliament is in full session. If he be not glad to make a speedy exit, he must be a veritable salamander and he will read his daily paper thereafter with some amount of sympathy for those by whose agency it has been produced, and a greater forbearance for any telegraphic blunder which may have been caused.”

In the event, it was to be another ten years before the Post Office was moved to these splendid new buildings in Westwell Street, facing the Guildhall Square. Build on the site of the old St Andrew’s vicarage, by the firm of Lapthorn and Goad, to the designs of a London architect who, strangely enough, also bore the name Rivers, this office was opened in 1884. It was enlarged 20 years later, and 30 years after that it was superseded by a larger building, still in Westwell Street.

The 1933 Post Office, a wonderful blend of art and architecture, was sadly to be the shortest-lived of them all, as it was destroyed in the Blitz eight years later. The post-war office, which stood in view of the site of its Whimple Street predecessor, was opened in 1955.

Meanwhile, the volume of mail handled in Plymouth went from around one million letters per year in 1874 to, at the height of Christmas, around one million letters a day in 1991. Around that time, the advent of the internet and then social media led to a massive decline in letter writing and postcard sending, and the post office is now having to meet fresh challenges.

Since 2006, W H Smith has steadily been taking on Post Office responsibilities nationally in town and city centres, and more recently Plymouth became one of many such examples.