Sending letters
In Britain, the Romans introduced a messenger system to deliver mail safely which benefitted from the simultaneous programme of road building and the construction of overnight shelters. Thereafter, the development of a postal system was very gradual: not until the beginning of the Twelfth Century were there any significant changes. Existing Roman roads continued to be used and, with letters being conveyed by messengers on horses, the network of postal routes expanded and the number of coaching inns increased. Royal messengers conveyed an annual average of 4,500 letters from Henry I's Exchequer but communication was generally becoming more crucial with the growth of settlements and associated commerce. At this time, letters were fastened with ties.
By the Thirteenth Century, royalty, sheriffs and bailiffs had their own messengers but these messengers would also accept a fee to deliver private documents for landowners (i.e. the literate few). Much of the communication was between royal departments and Parliament. In the early Fifteenth Century, literate people found it easier to write letters as cheaper paper began to replace the more expensive vellum and parchment. Thus, the nature of correspondence evolved from matters of governance and business to include personal letters.
| By the Seventeenth Century, the postal service was in great need of reform: postmasters had not been receiving their |
 |
By the end of the century, a pre-paid London Penny Post was operating for the delivery of letters across the capital. Four years after the Act of Union between England, Scotland and Wales, in 1711, the Post Office Act paved the way for a unified postal service but it would be another fifty four years before the Penny Post would include selected towns and cities outside London. In the late Eighteenth Century, John Palmer established the mail coach service.
The second period of postal service reform occurred in the early Nineteenth Century. In the 1830s, the opening of railways permitted the Post Office to transport letters more efficiently. Then, in 1837, Rowland Hill published Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability and the Select Committee on Postal Reform was established. The following year, travelling post offices were set up on trains so that letters could be sorted en route. Further reform in 1840 saw the Penny Post being universally adopted and the first pre-paid adhesive stamps, the Penny Black and the Twopenny Blue, made their appearances.
By the 1850s, people could buy stamps in advance; send Christmas cards; and drop letters into pillar boxes on the street. This is also when rudimentary postcodes were established for London. In 1870, the Post Office issued postcards which cost 1/2d to send. By 1919 there was an airmail service and the Post Office had fleets of motorcycles and vehicles. It was not until 1966 that postcodes were extended across the country and it was in 1968 that a first-class and second-class two-tier system was put in place.3
