Postal Museum, London facts for kids
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_Air_Mail_Post_Box.jpg)
An air mail postbox at the Postal Museum
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| Established | 2004 |
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| Location | Clerkenwell London, WC1 United Kingdom |
| Public transit access |   Farringdon Russell Square |
The Postal Museum is a special place that tells the story of mail and how it's been delivered over the years. It used to be called the British Postal Museum & Archive. This museum is managed by the Postal Heritage Trust. It first started in 2004 and then opened its doors in Central London as The Postal Museum on July 28, 2017.
Contents
Museum Locations
The Postal Museum has a few different spots where it operates:
- The main museum is in Phoenix Place, London. This is close to the Mount Pleasant sorting office in Clerkenwell.
- There's also a large storage area for museum items in Loughton, Essex.
- You can find another small museum called The Museum of the Post Office in the Community. This one is about the post office in Blists Hill Victorian Town, Shropshire.
How the Museum Started
The idea of keeping important Post Office records began a long time ago. The Public Records Act 1838 was one of the first steps to organize government archives. By 1896, the Post Office had its first archivist, someone whose job was to look after these records. Later laws in 1958 and 1967 made it even more important for the Post Office to keep its history safe and available.
In 1966, the first National Postal Museum (NPM) was created. This happened partly because a huge collection of Victorian stamps, called The Phillips Collection, was given to the country. Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the museum on February 19, 1969. It was located at King Edward Building near St Paul's Cathedral in London. Over the years, the museum gathered many items, like postal equipment, uniforms, and vehicles. There was so much that the small museum couldn't display everything!
In 1998, the King Edward Building was sold, and the NPM closed down. However, all the collections were kept safe. The museum and archive management were then combined. This part of the Post Office (which was later called Consignia, then Royal Mail Group) was known as the Heritage unit.
Royal Mail Group decided to let an independent charity take over this heritage work. This was because the mail market was changing, and Royal Mail was becoming more of a business. So, the 'Postal Heritage Trust' was formed in April 2004. It was known as the British Postal Museum & Archive. From 2004, this trust started offering many events, exhibitions, educational programs, and online resources.
The New Postal Museum
In February 2016, the British Postal Museum & Archive changed its name to The Postal Museum. It then began building a brand new museum. This new museum opened in 2017 in Clerkenwell, London, close to the Mount Pleasant Mail Centre. The museum cost about £26 million to build and has two main parts.
One exciting part is that the museum opened up a 1-kilometer (about 0.6 miles) stretch of track from London's Mail Rail to the public. This Mail Rail was the world's first driverless electric railway! In the museum section, visitors can see many interesting things. These include a special stamp that would have been used if Scotland had won the 1978 FIFA World Cup. You can also see telegrams from the night the Titanic sank. Another cool item is the childhood stamp album of Freddie Mercury. There's even an early copy of the book Ulysses that was stopped from being delivered because it was banned in the United Kingdom until 1936.
Working with Royal Mail
The Postal Museum is an independent charity, but it has strong connections with Royal Mail Group. The museum gets money each year from Royal Mail to manage the Royal Mail archive. Even though the archive is part of the Postal Museum, Royal Mail is ultimately responsible for it because it's a public record. These records are considered nationally important, which means they are very valuable for researchers to study.
See also
- Postal museum
- Connected Earth
