The Penny Black Stamp Store: The Postal Museum in the UK

Sunday, 26 March 2017

The Postal Museum in the UK

One of the most interesting things in the calendar for 2017 is the re-opening of the Postal Museum in London, United Kingdom, slated for mid-2017. In February 2016, the BPMA (British Postal Museum & Archive), now rebranded as The Postal Museum, began building a new museum to be opened in 2017 in Clerkenwell, London, near to the Mount Pleasant Mail Centre. The museum is expected to cost £26 million to build, and will consist of two sections. The Postal Museum is expected to open up to the public a 1 kilometre stretch of track in London's Mail Rail, which was the world’s first driverless electric railway. The railway was originally built by order of Parliament - so technically - it belongs to the public. Even though Royal Mail wasn’t using the railway any more, it still had an obligation to keep the tunnels safe and dry and ensure there were no collapses or other potential dangers. The project to turn the Mail Rail into a tourist attraction will give visitors a Postal Museum covering centuries of the Royal Mail’s operation and across the road, the chance to ride the Mail Rail.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/06/geeks_guide_mail_rail

https://postalmuseum.org
Phoenix Place
London WC1X 0DA
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A Brief History

Before 1st May 1840, posting a letter was a very complicated and expensive affair. It could cost the equivalent of a days wage, and it was charged by how many sheets of paper were used and how far it had to travel. Normally the recipient had to pay the cost.

Sir Roland Hill was responsible for reforming the British postal system, and as part of this a competition was held for the public to design the world’s first adhesive postage stamp. However none of the entries were thought suitable, so instead they used the profile sketch of a then 15 year old Queen Victoria. This image was used on stamps until the end of her reign. Because the Penny Black was the first postage stamp in the world, it did not show a country of origin, and to this day British stamps are the only stamps in the world that do not state what country they are from.

However, the Penny Black only remained in circulation for a year, as it was soon found that it was possible to remove the ink of the red cancellation mark and re-use the stamp, so the Treasury switched to the Penny Red and black cancellation ink.