The telegraph and post office was moved from the Abbey Road premises in 1870 to make way for the building of the new Corn Exchange and a new post office opened in the stone-built premises in the market place, now the town centre, on the left of what is now Lloyds TSB bank. My picture of this post office (above) is one of the oldest photographs of the town in existence, taken prior to demolition in 1870 and showing the mail man, John Kettle, and his horse standing outside.

The telegraph was connected early in 1870 and the first telegram was despatched from the town on Saturday 5th February while the telephone was introduced to Bourne three years later. Mr Gatliffe remained as postmaster until Friday 1875 when he retired on a pension and John Thomas Pearce took over and ran the business in conjunction with his stationery shop next door.

Letters from London were arriving four times a day and there were three daily deliveries. The last collection for the capital was between 7 p m and 8 p m and the wall letter boxes that had been introduced in 1853 were so popular that they were being emptied three times a day between 6.45 p m and 7.05 p m. There were many such collection boxes around the town but they were much smaller than those in use today.

By 1905, when the postal service had become universally popular and extremely well used, the arrangements were quite surprising when compared with today and a trade directory that year recorded the system operating in Bourne: “Letters from London, by mail cart, via Peterborough, arrive at 4 am and are delivered by 7 am. A second mail arrives at 11 am and is delivered to callers at 11.30 am. A third mail arrives by rail at 2.27 pm and is delivered by 3 pm and a fourth mail at 6 pm and is delivered by 7.20 pm.” In addition, the wall letter boxes in Eastgate, South Street, West Road and North Road were being emptied three and sometimes four times a day.

John Pearce died suddenly in January 1905 at the early age of 59 and he was succeeded as postmaster by his son William who recognised the importance and potential of the postal work and immediately began enlarging the premises still further.

A horse drawn mail cart transported postal items between Sleaford and Peterborough, calling at Bourne, a job that was not without its hazards. On the evening of Tuesday 24th December 1861, Christmas Eve, there was great anxiety in the town because the mail cart which was due at 8 p m did not arrive. It later transpired that the cart had overturned at Graby Bar, a tollgate six miles north of the town on what is now the A15, and smashed to pieces, badly injuring the driver who was thrown out on to the roadside. A fresh horse and cart were produced at Aslackby and a gentleman from that place, accompanied by a police officer, brought the mail to Bourne, arriving two hours later than scheduled. The replacement driver appears to have been celebrating the festive season when called out to help because a local newspaper reported that "the person in charge of the cart was in anything but a proper state to be entrusted with the conveyance of the mail bags". The regular driver's injuries were so serious that he was taken into the tollhouse at Graby Bar and was there for several days recovering.

The mail cart was replaced by a motor van in 1915, making its last run on May 10th. The driver on the final trip was Mr J B Toulson who had done the return journey every night for thirteen years at a weekly wage of 18 shillings [£42 in today's money]. The motor van also started making collections and deliveries at Morton, Haconby, Dunsby, Rippingale and Kirkby Underwood, to connect with despatches from Bourne at 10.30 and 11.45 a m. The new service resulted in some redundancies and Mr A S Allen, who had driven the mail cart to fetch the night letters for Dowsby for more than 23 years, was presented with a family bible to mark his lengthy service together with an acetylene lamp.

Business at Bourne Post Office continued to expand as the population increased and eighty years later, the premises had become so cramped and inconvenient for staff that a new Post Office, complete with sorting office at the rear, was opened in 1981, one of the most modern in South Lincolnshire. The site chosen was in West Street and included three old cottages, Nos 22, 24 and 26, that were demolished to make way for the new development.

The new red brick Post Office has been extremely popular with customers and attempts to downgrade and even close it have been successfully resisted on several occasions, notably in 2003 where an attempt to relocate the business as a counter service at the back of a supermarket 50 yards down West Street towards the Market Place was abandoned after several months of protest by the public and local organisations and a spirited campaign by this newspaper.