Great Britain's Regional Stamps

Royal Mail is celebrating the 5oth Anniversary of the introduction of regional stamps for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with the nine stamp, miniature sheet pictured above.

"Everyone agreed that it would be a good idea if Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey had their own definitives with a regional slant. However, it took years of lobbying, debate and internal wrangling before an agreement was finally reached and the first of the new country definitives were issued in August 1958," according to a write-up on the Royal Mail website.

Until then the symbols of all four countries of the UK appeared on one unified design, but calls for a ‘regional’ stamp began as early as 1945 when the Channel Islands requested their own postage stamps.

Of the nine stamps, three are from Scotland, three from Northern Ireland and three from Wales. Stamps from the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands were not included in the miniature sheet as these territories are now governed by separate postal administrations according to Hellmail.com.

The stamps feature the portrait of the Queen by Dorothy Wilding, who was the first woman to be appointed Official Royal Photographer for the Coronation in 1937.

Click here to view each of the stamps.