Postcrossing Blog

Earlier this week, RTÉ (Ireland’s national broadcaster) aired part two of a six-part documentary about the Dublin’s General Post Office. The series, told in weekly episodes, revolves around the iconic building and includes stories from many of the people who use it on a daily basis. Here’s the synopsis:

“Best known as the headquarters of the 1916 Rising, the GPO has been at the heart of Irish life for 200 years. Inside the GPO goes behind the scenes at Ireland’s busiest post office; home to 950 staff, a microcosm of Irish society, and caretaker of letters, parcels, hopes and stories.”

Well… postcrossers do visit post offices rather often, so it’s only natural that a group of enthusiastic Irish postcrossers were picked to be featured on the documentary!

Sitting down in a café with their stamps and postcards, Nora (aka ned44440), John (aka jr11577), Claudia (aka chrissybaby) and Kodzos (aka kodzos) braved the cameras and did an excellent job representing the Irish Postcrossing community. Well done guys!

You can see the segment (until April 21st) at http://www.rte.ie/player/is/show/inside-the-gpo-30003923/10549881. This is the second part of this series — the first one can be seen here.
If you like it so far, do follow RTÉ's website for the next episodes!

Happy birthday, Penny Black! The world’s first adhesive postage stamp was introduced 175 years ago today, on May 1st 1840, as part of Sir Rowland Hill's postal reforms which paved the way to the modern postal system.

Featuring the profile of Queen Victoria, the Penny Black was sold for just one year, as it was discovered the red ink being used to cancel it was too easily removed… In 1841, it was replaced by the Penny Red, which was easier to cancel using black ink.

It’s not a very rare stamp, as over 68 million specimens were printed, but very few complete sheets have survived. The ones that have now belong to the British Postal Museum and you can see them up close on their upcoming exhibition about this famous stamp. It will run from May 6th until August 7th, in London.

Today we have a different sort of postman interview! Petr (aka Trainpostman) used to be a postman… for the a Czech Train Post Office! Petr worked there for 8 years, between 1990–1998 until the service closed in the end of the 90s.

Petr loved and missed his old job… so in 2009 he decided to put his design and photography skills to good use. He made a website called “The Museum of Czechoslovakian Train Post Office” to share his memories of his years working for it, inviting his former colleagues to contribute.

In 2011, Petr took it a step further, and organized a real exhibition with the information he collected, on a railway mail carriage from 1971, parked in Bratislava. He recreated the experience of working on a Train Post Office, so that visitors could see and enjoy it as well!

He has been doing it ever since for special events (Day of Railways, Night of Museums, …) on different railway cars from different owners. Transferring such an exhibition is quite tricky but it gives him the unique opportunity to bring life back to these historical cars. They’ve been held in several different carriages, some of which were over 100 years old!

Railway post offices have been discontinued in most countries in the past decades, slowly replaced by modern sorting machines in sorting centers and trucks. Petr is bringing them alive now and then with his awe-inspiring recreations — and sharing his memories with those who visit his museum.

For more information about the Czech Train Post Office, lots of interesting photos and to be updated about upcoming activities, visit his website at muzeumvlakoveposty.com.

Did you know that the oldest (unofficial) post box in South Africa is not an actual box… but a tree?

It’s true! In 1500, Pêro de Ataíde, captain of a Portuguese ship returning from the East, left a letter under a tree in Mossel Bay. The letter detailed the loss of some of the ships on their fleet and warned of troubles in the eastern seas. It was customary for passing ships to stop on the bay to take on food and fresh water, and so some years later, the letter was discovered and delivered to Portugal by another sea captain.

This was the start of the South African postal service, as seamen often left correspondence there, in the hopes of it being delivered by passing ships.

The impressive milkwood tree is said to be over 600 years old, and still stands there overlooking the bay. It has been declared a national monument, and a postbox was set up under it with its own special cancellation mark and everything! The postbox sits on what is now the Bartolomeu Dias Museum complex.

A big thank you to Cathy, the South African member who pointed out this tree for us and took the nice photos above. That is her auntie Chris on the left, mailing a postcard home!

218 years ago today, the great Rowland Hill was born! If his name does not ring a bell, read on – we have tales of postal corruption and innovation to share with you today!

Once upon a time, the British postal system was… a mess. Expensive, complex and widely corrupt, it was seen as wasteful and inadequate for the needs of a growing industrial nation. For instance, did you know that correspondence at the time was paid by the recipient and it depended on the distance travelled and number of paper sheets it contained? As a result, people often cross-wrote letters to save space or encoded messages on the cover of the letter – which could be analyzed and then discarded without payment. A significant percentage of letter-writers would also abuse the system by sending their correspondence under the personal frank of members of the parliament (who could send them without paying).

Rowland Hill, a teacher from Worcestershire, studied the state of the postal service for several years, before producing a pamphlet called “Post Office Reform; its Importance and Practicability”, in early 1837. In in, Hill called for “low and uniform rates” according to weight, rather than distance:

“The postage on all letters received in a post-town, and delivered in the same, or any other post-town in the British Isles, shall be at the uniform rate of one penny per half ounce”.

He also showed that most of the costs incurred in mail delivery were not for transport but rather handling at the origins and destinations – and these could be greatly reduced if pre-payment of postage by the sender was implemented. In order to achieve this, Rowland Hill proposed official pre-printed lettersheets and adhesive stamps – a piece of paper “covered at the back with a glutinous wash”.

The plan was met with resistance from the part of Royal Mail, but also with plenty of support from traders, merchants and bankers, fed up with the high costs and the corruption of the system in place. With a lot of pressure from these groups, Rowland Hill was appointed to the Treasury, in order to put his plan into operation: the Postal Reform was born!

A design competition was held to figure out how to implement the prepaid postage, and after a few false starts, the Penny Black made its debut in May 1840. It featured an engraving of a very young Queen Victoria, based on a commemorative medal sculpted by William Wyon.

The success of Rowland Hill’s reforms were mixed. One one hand, the financial cost of the Uniform Penny Post was disastrous and it would take over 30 years for Royal Mail to reach once more the revenue levels they had before 1840. On the other hand, postal traffic was greatly increased, since the lower cost made postal communications more affordable and accessible to the masses – paving the way to the development of many sectors of the economy.

Rowland Hill was knighted in 1860 for his many services to the United Kingdom. His legacy lives on in the form of the modern postal service.