This week we take a look back at the GPO, Worcester’s sorting offices, postcodes and manned telephone exchanges.
Did you use to work in the sorting office or behind the counter at the main post office? Perhaps you worked on the old telephone exchange or were out and about with a sack over your shoulder.
We'd love to hear your post office memories or see any pictures you may have. You can email our community content editor at barry.kinghorn@newsquest.co.uk or share your memories on our Facebook page We grew up in Worcester
The central post office in Foregate Street shortly after its opening
It’s January 1986 and postie Don Hill has the sad task of sifting through the 15,000 Christmas cards and parcels which were destined never to arrive after being incorrectly addressed. Many unable to be returned had to be destroyed
October 1978 and high praise for eight Worcester postal workers who played their part in foiling a major pension book fraud
Post Office essay competition winner Melissa Barlow, left, and runner-up Sian Watkins, both Alice Ottley pupils, were given a tour of the sorting office in the run-up to Christmas in 1979 as part of their prize
June 1981 and the special queuing system in operation at Worcester’s central post office. Some things never change...
The Sansome Place sorting office was eerily quiet in September 1988 when sorting shelves lay empty during a two-week long Post Office dispute
Workers were faced with the task of sorting the enormous mountain of mail that had built up during a fortnight-long Post Office dispute
Makes a change from standing looking cross; Ivor Anthony, June Magee and Ian Furlong were left scratching their heads because their address apparently didn’t exist and was causing problems for posties in 1984
May 1970 was the date for this picture of the Edward VIII post box. Sadly the girls are unidentified
November 1971 and Worcester postman Sid Hames is pictured wearing his new white livery, designed to make mailmen easier for motorists to make out on dark winter mornings
Operators on the new switchboards in the Post Office building in Charles Street in August 1980
November 1979 saw assistant executive engineer Allan Clayton showing off the £1.5 million worth of equipment in the apparatus room at the new telephone exchange
July 1976 and the Post Office’s Motor Transport Group had developed an oil recycling device for its vans
December 1973 and extra staff are drafted in to deal with the big Christmas post rush in Southfield Street
The Postmaster is very sorry that this packet has been accidentally delayed in the post, says the message on this letter, which turned up in August 1978 – seven years after it was posted
Pete Langley appeared in a feature 40 years ago about the canine problems facing Worcester posties
May 1982 and an original 19th-century Mail coach leaves Worecster for Pershore, marking the opening of a new philatelic counter at the Post Office in Foregate Street
January 1981 and Anne Watt was told she faced a nine-month wait to have a phone connected. She is pictured, ironically, beside the telegraph pole a few yards from her front door
From left, Wilf Bates, Roger Cox and Mike Butler, complete with snazzy T-shirts, were ready to compete in the Post Office marathon in October 1980
‘As the customer will see it’, ran the headline on this March 1953 story about the new Head Post Office in Foregate Street
July 1967 and the Providence Works in Blockhouse were bought by the GPO to be pulled down to make way for a new telephone exchange
Putting you through... Worcester Telephone Exchange in September 1974 which, in a sign of the times, bore the headline ‘Meet the ‘hello’ dollies’
It’s hard to believe because it feels like they’ve been around forever, but postcodes only came into use in 1970. The Post Office took out full-page adverts explaining how the new system would work
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