How the postal service began

The first letters were carried during the 12th century by messengers appointed by Henry I and this led to the establishment of posting houses where they could change horses. Postal marking was introduced by Edward II and in 1516, Henry VIII created the Royal Mail with a regular system of post roads, houses and staff. From this time through to the postal reforms of 1839-1840, it was most common for the recipient to pay the postage, although it was possible to prepay the charge at the time of sending.

Early letters were carried by horses and then stagecoaches, deposited at posting houses or coaching inns and paid for through a fee at Excise Offices, and then sent on their way. The first post carried through Lincolnshire was in 1536 during popular uprisings in the county and Yorkshire against Henry VIII's break with the Roman Catholic Church and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, as well as other specific political, social and economic grievances. This resulted in post roads being established in Lincoln, Sleaford and Stamford, but it was not until the introduction of stagecoaches in the 18th century that made small towns prosperous and therefore a worthwhile call that Bourne was included in the service.

An Excise Office was established in 1808 at the Angel Hotel in the market place at Bourne, stopping point for all of the stagecoaches which passed through the town and where makers of a wide range of goods were required to pay their necessary duties as well as that on letters to be carried. Here the money was collected and the sealed items duly stamped with the name of the town, usually with a circular wooden die and a written note of the postage to be paid.

Prior to 1845, correspondence was not enclosed in an envelope. The letters were usually on a single sheet of paper and written in ink with a quill pen then folded to hide the contents and protected with a wax seal before being addressed and postmarked on the outside. Some of the earliest surviving posts recorded in Lincolnshire date from the 18th century such as Sleaford (1707), Boston (1716), Folkingham (1730) and Colsterworth (1762) but the first known from Bourne are dated 1747.

The arrangement changed completely with the arrival of the uniform penny post in 1840 requiring the sender to pay and the penny black became the world’s first postage stamp and it is this system that has since evolved into that which we have today.

Early stationery posts are known as entires and are eagerly sought by collectors today because in many cases, earlier generations prized only the printed or embossed stamps which were cut from the sheet, thus destroying its value.

Complete entires are therefore today's target for collectors and several are in the possession of Gilbert Smith, aged 70, a retired painter and decorator and keen philatelist, of Forest Avenue, Bourne, who also lectures locally and throughout East Anglia on the subject. He is also a member of the Royal Philatelic Society, vice-president of the Peterborough Philatelic Society and of the East Midlands & East Anglian Philatelic Federation of which he is also a judge and is due to be president in 2012. The entires reproduced below are from his collection.

WRITTEN JANUARY 2011

See also

Early days on the road     The Post Office

Memories of the mail cart