General Post Office, London

General Post Office, London
The Post Office in St Martin le Grand by Thomas Shepherd (late 1820s).jpg
The 19th century headquarters of the General Post Office in St Martins-le-Grand in the City of London
General information
Architectural style Grecian
Address St Martins-le-Grand
Town or city London
Country England
Construction started 1825
Completed 1829
Demolished 1912
Technical details
Other dimensions 400 feet (120 m) long, 80 feet (24 m) deep
Design and construction
Client General Post Office
Architect Sir Robert Smirke.

The General Post Office, St. Martin’s Le Grand, (later known as GPO East) was the main post office for the City of London between 1829 and 1912.

History

Originally known as the General Letter Office,[1] the first headquarters for the General Post Office was built on the eastern side of St Martins-le-Grand in the City of London between 1825 and 1829 to designs by Sir Robert Smirke.

This was England's first purpose built post office[2]. It was in the Grecian style with ionic porticoes, and was 400 feet (120 m) long and 80 feet (24 m) deep. The building's main facade had a central hexastyle Greek Ionic portico with pediment, and two tetra style porticoes without pediments at each end. The main interior was the large letter-carriers room, with its elegant iron gallery and spiral staircase[3].

From 1868, the GPO experimented with the London Pneumatic Despatch Company services which operated a pneumatic tube from Euston Railway station for the delivery of mail, but the experiment was unsuccessful and terminated in 1874.

Expansion

In the 1870s a new building was added on the western side of the street to house the Telegraph department, and the General Post Office North was constructed immediately to the north of the Telegraph building in the 1890s as the GPO continued to expand.[4] To avoid confusion, the GPO was renamed GPO East.

When the Central London Railway was constructed in 1900 its nearby station was named Post Office. Sir Robert Smirke’s building was closed in 1910 and demolished in 1912[5] and the current headquarters of BT, BT Centre, a post World War II building, is on the site of the old Telegraph Office.

The only fragment surviving is the Ionic cap from the right hand corner of the portico. This five-ton piece was presented to Walthamstow Urban Council and is in Vestry Road, Walthamstow Village. [6]

References

  1. ^ The London encyclopaedia. Christopher Hibbert, Ben Weinreb. 2008 p.660
  2. ^ page 154, Living, Leisure and Law: Eight Building Types in England 1800-1914, Geoff Brandwood (Ed), 2010, Spire Books, ISBN 978-1-904965-27-5
  3. ^ page 473, John Summerson, Architecture in Britain 1530-1830, 8th Edition 1991, Pelican Books
  4. ^ Report of the Postmaster General on the Post Office: Volumes 43-51. Great Britain. Post Office. 1897
  5. ^ British building firsts: a field guide. David Crawford. 1990
  6. ^ The Buildings of England, London: Volume 5, Nikolaus Pevsner, Bridget Cherry - 2005