A brief history of the Post Office in the UK

The story of the UK’s postal service, as we know it today, starts over 500 years ago. King Henry VIII appointed the first ‘Master of the Posts’, Sir Brian Tuke, in about 1516, to establish a national postal network to serve his royal court. This postal network was restricted to royal letters only and was not open to the public, hence literally ‘Royal Mail’.

‘Untitled: Sir Brian Tuke – Lantern Slide’, black & white photographic lantern slide of an earlier painting of Sir Brian Tuke, the first Master of the Posts (c.1516), lantern slide 19th century, (2012-0143/02)

Building on this network, the Post Office was established in 1635 by King Charles I, who opened up the ‘Royal Mail’ to the public, as a way of making money and expanding the network. After the English Civil War, the Parliamentarian leader, Oliver Cromwell, called it the General Post Office (GPO) and that name continued into the 20th century. The GPO was a government department until 1969, which meant many (but not all) of its employees were civil servants, and its records are public records.

In 1669 the role of Postmaster General was created to lead the Post Office, and it soon became a political appointment. Additionally, in 1694 the role of Secretary was created. This is roughly equivalent to a CEO today. Sir Francis Freeling was the Secretary for nearly 40 years from 1797. His role included leading the GPO’s task of intercepting suspicious mail during the Napoleonic Wars.

The 1700s saw a great expansion of postal routes and the introduction of the mail coaches.

‘A Halted Mailcoach’ – Oil Painting, Artist: H. Alken, oil paint, canvas, wood, 1830-1850, (OB1996.324)

The 1800s were an increasingly busy time for the Post Office. There was an explosion of activity that gathered pace throughout the century. In the 19th and 20th centuries the Post Office was one of the biggest employers in the country.

Up until the 1830s it was very expensive to send a letter. There were lots of complaints about this from the public and businesses, so eventually postal rates were reformed. In 1840 the uniform penny postage was introduced and the world’s first adhesive postage stamp, the famous ‘Penny Black’.

‘Phillips Collection, Volume X: 1d black plates 1a and 1b, used on covers’, original letters using Penny Black postage stamps, 1840-1841 (POST 141/10)

The postal reform was an immediate success. The figures tell their own story. In 1839 the number of chargeable letters was about 76 million, by 1899 it was 2.2 billion! So, although revenue was cut initially in 1840, with the massive increase in letters and other items sent, it soon recovered. Postage stamps were then gradually introduced throughout the world.

In the second half of the 19th century the Post Office started to offer lots of new services like banking, telegrams and parcels. For a long time, the GPO only delivered letters. If you wanted to send a parcel you had to use a private ‘carrier’ or the railways. This all changed in 1883 when the Post Office took over parcel delivery as well. It also developed a nationwide network of post offices for people to access these services. In the 20th century it added telephones, radio and tv licensing to its services, and postcodes were introduced in the 1960s and 1970s.

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By the 1930s, the Post Office had grown so large and complex that it provoked public criticism. A committee of enquiry was set up, the Bridgeman Committee, and this led to a large-scale move away from central control in London to regional management across the country.

With the Post Office Act of 1969, the GPO stopped being a government department and became a public corporation, and the role of Postmaster General came to an end. In 1981 the telecoms part of the Post Office became a separate public corporation, British Telecom. In 1984, British Telecom was privatised and is now known as BT. The Post Office’s banking operation, Girobank, went through several changes and became part of Alliance & Leicester in 1990 (now part of the bank Santander). The parcels, letters and counter services were reorganised and in 1990 Royal Mail Parcels was renamed Parcelforce. Today, post offices are run by Post Office Ltd, which is still government owned, while Royal Mail Group is a privatised company responsible for delivering the post, which includes creating postage stamps. In December 2024, the UK government approved the sale of Royal Mail to Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group, this is the first time the UK postal service has been in foreign ownership. The deal was reviewed under national security laws and was completed in April 2025.

Throughout its long history the Post Office has connected people in the UK with each other and with those in other countries around the world. The rich communications heritage in our collections at The Postal Museum connects us with these stories from our past. Why not come along to the museum to explore them for yourself?