Slated to open early 2017 at the site of the Mount Pleasant sorting office in Clerkenwell, The Postal Museum will aim to bring 500 years of communications history “through the eyes of one of its most iconic services” while offering visitors a chance to experience Mail Rail with rides through disused miniature tunnels of the world’s first driverless electric railway.
I tagged along to the breaking ground ceremony and media tour at the museum earlier this week and was impressed by a project that promises to deliver a first class experience when it opens its doors to the public next year. I left certain that Londoners and visitors alike will give the new historic attraction their stamp of approval.
The museum will be comprised of five interactive zones – The Royal Mail, Mail for Everyone, Post Office in Conflict, Designs on Delivery, and Communication and Change – taking folks through the many years of Britain’s postal past with scores of artefacts to view and examine. In addition to the interactive zones there will be a dedicated learning space, a family play zone especially for children, a new purpose-built repository and research facility with two and a half miles of shelving housing extensive archives, and Mail Rail.
Most likely to elicit “cool” and even “wow” from most visitor’s lips will be Mail Rail. Indeed, that was the most neato part of my tour. Through an immersive ride and interactive exhibitions set along a short section of disused miniature tunnels of the world’s first driverless electric railway, Mail Rail will take visitors on a journey beneath London’s streets to explore an engineering marvel used by the postal service from 1927 until the early years of the 21st century stretching from Paddington to Whitechapel.
More a wall busting than a ground breaking, TV presenter and “history guy” Dan Snow spoke at the ceremony before tagging a sledgehammer to an old manager’s office where it will be replaced by the family play zone. Snow described the story the museum – funded by a number of organisations and individuals, including Royal Mail, Post Office and Heritage Lottery Fund – will tell as that of the “world’s most important social network.”
If you stop and think about it, Snow had a point as those of us who, once upon a time, put pen to paper, sealed envelopes, and licked the backs of postage stamps to communicate with others across the globe might still be able to vaguely recall while present and future generations of digital natives might find wonder in how correspondence used to take place.
The Postal Museum’s address is Cathorpe House, 15-20 Phoenix Place, WC1X 0DA. Find out more at postalmuseum.org.
