Nothing will give the reader a better idea of the advances made by the Post Office during the last two hundred years than a comparison of the various buildings which have from time to time been the home of the General Post Office in London. The story of the buildings is one of continued growth and expansion right down to the present day. The General Post Office is always becoming too small and inconvenient for its work. And there has scarcely been any period when it was not necessary to rent overflow premises to meet the growing needs of the times.

As I have already pointed out, the system of posts in the time of the Tudors was used chiefly for the conveyance of Government despatches. The Master of the Posts was a Court official, and there was no need for a public office in London. The extension of postal business, especially between London and the Continent, required, however, in the later years of the sixteenth century, an office in the City of London, and according to Stow's Survey a post office was first established in Cloak Lane, near Dowgate Hill. This is the hill on which Cannon Street Station now stands, and it was also the centre of Roman London. The necessity of the foreign post was one of the reasons for the creation of the office, and it is a link between this time and our own that the continental mail train now starts from Cannon Street Station. Scarcely anything is known of this post office except the bare fact of its existence.

From Dowgate Hill the General Post Office was removed, at some date in the first half of the seventeenth century, to the sign of the Black Swan in Bishopsgate. These were most probably what we now call licensed premises: at any rate Pepys has recorded that on one occasion he went “to the musique-meeting at the Post Office.” Then happened the Great Plague of 1664-1665, and we have the benefit of a report from the senior officer as to the way in which the visitation affected the Post Office. “That dureing the late dreadfull sickness when many of the members of the office desert the same and that betweene 20 and 30 of the members dyed thereof, your petitioner, considering rather the dispatch of your Majesty's service than the preservation of himself and family, did hazard them all, and continued all that woefull tyme in the said office to give dispatch and conveyance to your Majesty's letters and pacquetts, and to preserve your revenue arising from the same.” The writer was evidently a pushful official who expected recognition of his services, and in yet a fuller petition for a reward for keeping the Post Office open during the Plague he begs that he may have an order to the Commissioners of Prizes to deliver to him some brown and white sugar granted to him by His Majesty from the ship EspÉrance of Nantes, condemned as a prize at Plymouth. I hope he obtained his sugar: in our days we should have made him a K.C.B. Then came the Great Fire of 1666, and the Post Office was burnt out. In an old newspaper of 1666 may be seen this advertisement: “The General Post Office is for the present held at the Two Black Pillars in Bridges Street over against the Fleece Tavern, Covent Garden, till a more convenient Place can be found in London.”

As soon as the City was rebuilt “the more convenient Place” was found in a house in Lombard Street, and by the year 1680, if not earlier, the General Post Office moved into its new premises. The house had been the private residence of Sir Robert Viner, a city dignitary who had been Lord Mayor of London, and it was rented from him. This was the home of the Head Office for nearly 150 years. Comparatively little is known of the history of this office, and a writer to whom I am indebted for much of my information writes justly “that one cannot escape a feeling half of wonder and half of shame that so few records should remain of an office where possibly Milton and certainly Dryden posted their letters.” But what we do know about this office is exceedingly interesting.

There were officials occupying positions which go by the same name as at the present day. There were the Postmasters-General, a dual office which in the early part of the eighteenth century was non-political, and the Postmasters-General were entitled to live at the General Post Office and to have free coals, candles, and tinware. There was a Receiver-General with a salary of £150, an Accountant-General with a salary of £200, a Comptroller of the Inland Office, six Clerks of the Roads, a Secretary to the Postmaster-General, and a Postmaster-General's Clerk. Positions which are not known in these days were Windowman and Alphabet Keeper—this man handed out letters to callers, and his other title probably referred to the pigeon-holes in which the letters were kept. There was a “Mail Maker”—a maker of leather bags for letters—the Stores Department in its early beginnings—and there were three Letter Bringers. One official known as the Ratcatcher received £1 a year for his useful services, another man described as a “Scavenger” received £3, 6s. a year and was in charge of the drainage, which was probably below suspicion.

But perhaps the difference between these times and our own is most directly marked by two entries in the accounts of the period. There were two allowances of £30 each for beer for clerks and sorters, and once a year at least £20 was allowed for a feast for the resident clerks. This was usually held on the King's Birthday, and “the musique-meeting” at the Post Office which Pepys attended may have been one of these feasts. In an old newspaper of 1708 there is an account of one of the feasts, and the text of one of the songs is given. The writer says: “Some of the songs were made up as letters, and the Postboy blowing his horn rode into the Hall to the surprise of all that were present and distributed his letters from Parnassus. Indeed the people might very well be surprised, it being a country where hardly any one could think we held any correspondence. At the same time that the boy sounded his horn, Mr. —— rose up and sung the song.” The author of the particular song, extracts from which we give, was stated to hold “a very genteel place in the General Post Office relating to the Foreign letters, being master of several languages.” Truth, however, compels us to state his salary was only £40 a year. Here are two verses of “A Song Performed at the Post Office Feast on Her Majesty's Birthday 1708. Written by Mr. Motteux, set by Mr. Leveridge:”—

In a little book entitled A Picture of London in 1808 I have found the following delightful passage relating to the London Post Office: “It is the most important spot on the surface of the globe. It receives information from the Poles.” This is rather wide of the mark, seeing that both Poles were then undiscovered. The next statement may have been nearer the truth: “It distributes instructions to the Antipodes.” And we seem to get out of our depth farther on: “It is in the highest degree hitherto realised the seat of terrestrial perceptions and volition. It is the brain of the whole earth.” But all this tall language was used for a purpose. The object was to draw attention to a public scandal and to bring before the notice of people the miserable accommodation which the State provided for her wise and brainy servants. For the writer asks us to look on the other side of the picture. “The building is hidden in a narrow alley, misshapen even to deformity, and scarcely accessible to the very mail coaches which collect there for their nightly freights.”

It was indeed the introduction of the mail coach which made the Lombard Street office unsuitable for its purpose. The coaches were obliged to stand in the street itself, and only two or three could be in place at the same time. Various sites were suggested for the new office, and as increased space was the great necessity, it was decided to clear away the rookeries which existed in the liberty of St. Martin's and to build there. The district had deteriorated lamentably since the days of the College of St. Martin's le Grand which stood there for several centuries, and which has an interesting and distinguished history. The district has older associations still, and during the clearing of the sites for the Post Office buildings many interesting remains of the Roman occupation of London were found. In 1818 a very ancient vaulted chamber, built in part of Roman materials, which had been previously concealed beneath the more modern houses, was exposed to view. Sections of the Roman wall have also been discovered, and many other remains, probably of a later date, built out of Roman materials. The College of St. Martin's le Grand possessed the privilege of sanctuary, and this fact may have explained the evil repute of the neighbourhood. It became a rogues' quarter, and great must have been the relief of Londoners when a statute of James I. abolished all privileges of sanctuary. Yet the inhabitants seem to have been able to retain many privileges. They retained their own court for the trial of minor offences: they could keep the place as filthy as they liked until it became a breeding-place for the plague, which regularly broke out at intervals during the seventeenth century, and they appointed their own police or watchmen.

The site was purchased by the City with duties levied on coals brought into London. And the Government obtained the property from the City at a cost of £240,000.

It is amusing to notice, in the report of the Committee which considered the question of the new building, how afraid its members were that in the desire for beauty of style the question of utility would be neglected. Post Office architects have seldom needed this caution. “Ornamental decorations introduced for the mere purpose of embellishment, and unconcerned with utility, while they prodigiously enhance the cost, rarely produce an effect in point of elegance and grandeur which can compensate for it.” And yet again, “an office for the receiving and delivery of letters which should be concealed behind a front fit for a palace, and flanked by triumphal arches, would present an incongruity no less offensive to good taste than inconsistent with rational economy.” Here speaks the voice which in the early years of the nineteenth century produced so many evil results in street architecture.

The architect of the new building was Mr. Smirke, and it is certainly to his credit that he was not unduly influenced by the recommendations of the Committee. The site covered two acres, and the clearance displaced a thousand inhabitants. It swept away numbers of alleys and courts, and when the building itself was opened in 1829 it at once took its place as a great addition to the architectural beauty of the City of London. Everybody who has visited London must be familiar with at least the exterior of the building. It was designed to meet the needs of the mail coach service, yet no sooner was the building opened than the sound of railways began to be heard in the land. But for nearly ten years the mail coaches started from St. Martin's le Grand, and traces of this era can be seen in the drive which goes round the building with an open courtyard at the north end. The Bull and Mouth Yard where the coaches were made up was opposite.

One of the features of the building was a lofty central hall, and through it was a public thoroughfare to Foster Lane. The letters were posted in this hall, and the scene at six o'clock was always one of great animation. Little by little as the needs of the service became different and more pressing, the internal architecture of St. Martin's le Grand was altered almost beyond recognition. The great hall was closed, and the space thrown into the Sorting Office. “No indignity that can possibly be heaped on the poor old thing can add to its disfigurement,” wrote Mr. R. W. Johnston, an admirer of the original building. And he added: “The place has been practically disembowelled, and what has been taken out of the bottom has been placed on the top, with the result that an absolutely pure design has been converted into a nondescript of the most extraordinary character.” This was inevitable from the point of view of utility, but the constant patching up could not go on indefinitely. In later years the letter and newspaper branches of the service monopolised the whole of the old building, but in its early days it took in practically the whole of the Head Office. Here worked Colonel Maberley, who had been Sir Rowland Hill's chief official opponent; here worked later the two men together rather uncomfortably, and with little in common.

Just as in the case of Lombard Street, the story of St. Martin's le Grand would be incomplete without some attempt to realise the human elements which went to make up its life during the years of its prime. The Post Office has always suffered in reputation both in the eyes of the public and of the Treasury from the accepted idea that its duties are mainly confined to sorting letters. Gentlemen high up in the Secretarial Department have sometimes been asked seriously by their friends whether they had noticed some particular letter in the course of its transmission through the post. The public scarcely realise the amount of financial and technical knowledge required on the part of men who have to organise the service, to enter into contracts with railways and steamship companies, or to preserve the discipline of the vast staff in town and country. This was the kind of work done at St. Martin's le Grand, and the men of the early and mid-Victorian period were workers in the full sense of the word.

The old riddle, “Why are Civil Servants like the fountains in Trafalgar Square?” with the answer, “Because they play from ten to four,” has never applied to the Post Office. The needs of the service forbade any slackness, and punctuality has always been a realised ideal. West End offices have frequently looked on aghast at the zeal and industry of St. Martin's le Grand. I remember a post office clerk telling me one day of an official call he had to make at the Colonial Office in the days before Mr. Chamberlain put new life into that Department. “I arrived there at a quarter to eleven, and found the door shut, and as I was hunting around to find the visitors' bell, a milkman bore towards me and said, 'I don't think they're up yet, sir,' so I took a turn round the Park and at ten minutes past eleven I went back again, and finding the charwoman had just started work, I explained to her my errand, and asked her to tell the Secretary of State that I was on the mat. ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘I don’t‘Oh,’ said she, ‘I don’t think anybody's come yet. We don't begin till eleven.’eleven.’ But I merely ventured to point out that the Horse Guards’ clock was nearly a quarter past eleven. Then this pampered menial drew herself up, and with a look of scorn, replied, daresaydaresay you are right, young man, but the gentlemen in this orfis don’t bind theirselves to be ’ere on the stroke of the hour.’hour.’ That was the difference between the City and the West End; the gentlemen of the Post Office bound themselves to be at their posts at the hour, and to come early and to stay late.

Officials have worked at St. Martin's le Grand who were men of letters in two senses of the word. Anthony Trollope began his career as a post office clerk here, and the insistence on punctuality was his chief difficulty. He could not be punctual, and though he said he could write official letters rapidly, correctly, and to the purpose, the steady, young, punctual but much less efficient clerk was usually preferred before him. But Trollope was a very difficult official to deal with. He says in his Autobiography: “I have no doubt that I made myself disagreeable. I know that I sometimes tried to be so.” And yet for many years he was an exceedingly useful public servant, and was frequently engaged on special work for the department. An old colleague of his has described Trollope's method of doing his official work. “I have seen him slogging away at papers at a stand-up desk with his handkerchief stuffed into his mouth and his hair on end, as though he could barely contain himself.” He was very overbearing and intolerant in his manner, and was certainly not popular at the Post Office. There is on record, however, one occasion when he must have been unusually pleasant. He was the clerk in waiting one evening, and a message came to him that the Queen of Saxony wanted to see the night mails sent out by the mail coaches. This was one of the sights of London at the time, and Trollope acted the part of showman. When he had finished he was handed half-a-crown by one of the suite. This, he said, was a bad moment for him.

“Why don't you pay an old woman sixpence a week to fret for you?” he said to a postmaster who came to him with grievances. The postmaster left his presence with an additional grievance that Mr. Trollope was a brute.

Sir Rowland Hill might have agreed with this postmaster, for he could never get on with Trollope. We can scarcely be surprised. In his Autobiography, Trollope says of Sir Rowland that “it was a pleasure to me to differ from Sir Rowland Hill on all occasions, and looking back now, I think that in all such differences I was right.” Such a confession explains much of Trollope's unpopularity. There is no place where omniscience is less appreciated than in a Government office. Mr. O'Connor Morris, who was the Postmaster-General of Jamaica when Trollope visited the island in 1858, has left on record this judgment on the novelist's official conduct to him. “I believe Mr. Trollope had a thousand good qualities of head and heart, which were disguised in a most unfortunate and repelling manner.”

Edmund Yates also worked at St. Martin's le Grand, and he has described very graphically the kind of scene which usually took place when Trollope was interviewing Sir Rowland Hill. “Trollope would bluster and rave and roar, blowing and spluttering like a grampus, while the pale old gentleman opposite him, sitting back in his arm-chair and regarding his antagonist furtively under his spectacles, would remain perfectly quiet until he saw his chance, and then deliver himself of the most unpleasant speech he could frame in the hardest possible tone.”

There is a good story told of Yates himself. The Post Office Library was founded in 1858. There were many unredressed grievances among the clerical staff in those days, and when Mr. Rowland Hill undertook to give a lecture on astronomy to the Library subscribers, a practical if somewhat unfair opportunity seemed given to the clerks to bring their necessities before the chief. Mr. Hill asked for a shilling from his audience in order to illustrate an eclipse. He wished to pass it between the eye and a lamp. Busy fingers went diving into purses and pockets for moons. After two or three minutes waiting Mr. Hill beheld an array of blank faces and shaking heads, and he naturally looked puzzled. Then Edmund Yates arose. “I beg to explain, sir, that we are all very anxious to try the experiment which you suggest, but unfortunately we cannot find a shilling among us.” On the whole we may wonder what type of man Sir Rowland Hill found the most trying to deal with at the Post Office, the man of genius or the hidebound official.

In the days before competitive examinations and the abolition of patronage, there were more “characters” and “individualities” in the Post Office service than in these degenerate days. St. Martin's le Grand has had its share of officials who were men of the world, men of letters, and eccentric men. Frank Ives Scudamore, the author of Day Dreams of a Sleepless Man and much light verse, will always be remembered at the Post Office as a chief who did everything magnificently and on the grand scale: even in his failures he was great. And everybody who worked under him seemed to catch his enthusiasm for work.

But we must leave these personal matters and get back to the buildings. With the acquirement of the telegraphs by the State, and the necessity for devoting an entire building to the London Postal Service, the erection of another big office became imperative. The building known as G.P.O. West was completed in 1873, and for a long time it provided accommodation for the Secretary's, Solicitor's, Engineer-in-chief's, and Central Telegraph Offices, together with a portion of the Receiver and Accountant Generals' Department.

In twenty years the need for extension became again pressing, and in 1895 the huge building known as G.P.O. North was opened. G.P.O. West was then given up to the Telegraph Service, and all the administrative offices were transferred to G.P.O. North. But these three immense buildings even in 1894 were by no means large enough to hold all the activities of the Post Office. The Parcel Post, the Money and Postal Order Departments, and the Post Office Savings Bank Department were all housed in other parts of the City of London, and there were overflow premises in streets near St. Martin's le Grand.

In this chapter we are only concerned with St. Martin's le Grand, and it is not without regret for the severance of old ties that Londoners witnessed in 1910 the closing of Smirke's fine post office, and the migration of the staff to King Edward's Building, henceforth to be the home of the London Postal Service. Not a hundred years had passed since the move from Lombard Street, and the Post Office had become a small nation of itself. And this body of men and women has for years regarded St Martin's le Grand as the metropolis of their nation, and when they have stood under the big clock which has seen so many mails arrive and depart, they have felt that they were citizens of no mean city.