The Post Office in the Community

Over the last year the British Postal Museum and Archives (BPMA) has been working on an project that involved building a Victorian Post Office at Blists Hill.

According to the BPMA website, "Blists Hill is a popular visitor attraction set in the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage site, the birth place of the Industrial Revolution. The town consists of original and reconstructed buildings from the Victorian and Edwardian period, set in a street scene. Each building is occupied by a business in keeping with the period, such as a chemist, a bank, a pub and a school, as well as a clay mine and canal nearby. Each of the businesses are reconstructed to appear as they might have done in the late Victorian or Edwardian period, and traditional goods are sold by costumed staff from the premises."

This past spring a Post Office of the period was opened to the public. The BPMA helped develop the Post Office, complete with postal clerks and counter. On the upper floor of the building the BPMA also created an exhibition called The Museum of the Post Office in the Community.

Shown above, volunteers dressed as a period postman and postwoman in front of the Canal Street Post Office at Blists Hill.

To take a virtual tour of the Museum of the Post Office in the Community, click here.