We share extraordinary communication stories from our archives and collections.
We are also collecting inspiring ways to connect with each other and providing postal service-inspired entertainment.
Experience Mail Rail from the comfort of your home, take a look at our large items in our off-site shop, explore the items in the collection and revisit our past exhibitions.
Get inspired by our archives and our collection of things to do and do from home.
The Postal Museum (formerly British Postal Museum & Archive) is a postal museum managed by the Postal Heritage Trust. It started in 2004 as The British Postal Museum & Archive and opened in central London as The Postal Museum on 28 July 2017.
The Public Records Act 1838 was the first step in organizing government records, including the civil service department then known as "the post office". This represents the beginning of what is now The Royal Mail Archive. In 1896, a report on the preservation of the post office records had been produced and the first archivist was appointed. The public records laws of 1958 and 1967 reinforced the need for the post office to keep, catalog and make available its archival documents.
In 1966, the first National Postal Museum (NPM) was established, in part thanks to the donation to the nation of the Phillips Collection of Victorian philately from Reginald M. Phillips. The museum was opened by the Queen on February 19, 1969, in the King Edward Building near St Paul's Cathedral in London. Over the years a collection of postal materials, uniforms, vehicles and much more has been developed; much more than could be exhibited in the small museum.
In 1998, the King Edward Building was sold and the NPM closed. The collections were preserved and the management of the museum and the archive was combined. This was known as the Post Office Asset Unit (later renamed Consignia, later Royal Mail Group).
Royal Mail Group has decided to transfer the work of this asset unit to an independent charity in light of the evolving mail market and its shift from public service to competitive business. This "Postal Heritage Trust" was born in April 2004 and has been labeled as the British Postal Museum & Archive.
Since 2004, BPMA has expanded its work by providing a program of events, exhibitions, training and web resources.
In February 2016, the BPMA was renamed the Postal Museum, and began building a new museum which opened in 2017 in Clerkenwell, London, near the Mount Pleasant Mail Center. The construction of the museum should have cost £ 26 million and consists of two sections.
The Postal Museum has opened to the public a 1 kilometer (0.62 mi) stretch of track in London's Mail Rail, which was the world's first driverless electric railway. In the museum section, planned attractions include a commemorative stamp that would have been used if Scotland had won the 1978 FIFA World Cup, telegrams of the night the Titanic sank and a first intercepted edition of Ulysses (banned in the UK until 1936).
The Postal Museum
Address: 15-20 Phoenix Pl, London WC1X 0DA
Phone: +44 300 030 0700
Site:
https://www.postalmuseum.org/Location inserted by
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