New Postal Museum in the Works ...

Plans for a new home for The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) were announced some time in March this year (2012) by the BPMA, Royal Mail Group and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The press statement said that the new Postal Museum will provide access to the BPMA's unique collections of 400 years of postal, social and design history, including photographs, posters, vehicles, pillar boxes, employment records of millions of people and a world-class stamp collection. Under a plan endorsed by the Government, the new centre will be established at Calthorpe House, on London's Mount Pleasant site, where the country's oldest mail centre is located. It is close to the existing home of the BPMA at Freeling House, which has very limited space for exhibitions and displays. Following which in July 2012, the BPMA announced that the planning application for its new home at Calthorpe House, near Mount Pleasant sorting office in London, has been approved by the London Borough of Camden. The grant of planning permission means that the BPMA is now another step further in realising the move of its unique collections to a new and accessible home. The new Postal Museum will provide access to the BPMA's amazing collections of 400 years of postal, social and design history, including photographs, posters, vehicles, pillar boxes, employment records of millions of people and a world-class stamp collection. The new centre will allow the BPMA to exhibit objects from its fascinating museum collection, which is currently held in storage. The new state-of-the-art premises will also include educational facilities for visiting schools, digitisation facilities and a purpose built Archive repository, built to modern environmental and security standards.

A fundraising campaign by the BPMA will be launched shortly to partially raise the funds required to create the art museum and visitor facility. The BPMA is an independent charity set up in 2004 to care for two significant collections: The Royal Mail Archive and the collections of the former National Postal Museum. It is the BPMA's mission to increase public access to these collections, making the story they tell of communication, industry and innovation accessible to the public. The new centre will allow the BPMA to exhibit objects from its collection which is currently in storage. As echoed by Dr Adrian Steel, Director of the BPMA, "We are aiming to create a state-of-the-art, sustainable home for a unique part of our national heritage. The new centre will showcase the UK's pioneering role in developing postal communications, which has shaped the world we live in".

Credit: The British Postal Museum & Archive Newsletter May 2012

http://postalheritage.org.uk/page/calthorpehouse