Postal museum · 2017 · London, United Kingdom

The Postal Museum

The Postal Museum is a museum dedicated to the history of the British postal service, run by the Postal Heritage Trust and located in the Farringdon district of central London. Opened on 28 July 2017, it traces the evolution of mail from Tudor royal messengers to the digital age, and is the only public venue where visitors can ride the restored Mail Rail — the narrow-gauge underground railway that carried post beneath London’s streets from 1927 to 2003.

At a glance

Type: Postal heritage museum
Period: Opened 28 July 2017; institution founded 2004 as the British Postal Museum & Archive
Style: Converted Victorian postal sorting office
Location: Phoenix Place, London WC1X 0DA, United Kingdom
Coordinates: 51.5248° N, 0.1161° W

Overview

The Postal Museum brings together centuries of British postal history under one roof, housing collections that span Tudor royal couriers, Victorian penny post reforms, wartime mail logistics, and the design heritage of postage stamps. The institution began as the British Postal Museum & Archive in 2004, managing the archives of the Royal Mail Group. It moved to its current dedicated public premises in Farringdon, opening to visitors in 2017 as a fully independent museum.

History

Royal Mail’s postal heritage programme dates back decades, with archival stewardship predating the museum’s formal public opening. The Postal Heritage Trust was created to manage the postal collections and archives of Royal Mail Group, and after years of development the organisation unveiled The Postal Museum at its Phoenix Place site in central London in July 2017. The building incorporates the historic Mount Pleasant sorting complex, one of the largest postal facilities in Britain, linking the museum to the operational story of British mail distribution.

What you see

The museum’s galleries tell the postal story through interactive displays, original vehicles, uniforms, mail bags, stamp design artwork, and archival photographs. The headline attraction is Mail Rail: visitors board specially designed replica carriages and travel through original tunnels of the Post Office Railway, experiencing the underground system that once transported up to four million letters per day. Above ground, a dedicated children’s play area styled as a sorting office encourages families to engage hands-on with the history of communication.

Cultural significance

The postal service shaped modern British society, enabling mass literacy, commerce, and democratic communication across the empire. The Postal Museum preserves this social infrastructure story, holding a unique collection of postage stamp artwork that doubles as a record of national iconography and political history. Its Mail Rail experience rescues from obscurity an engineering achievement that operated silently beneath London for 76 years.

Practical information

Address: 15–20 Phoenix Place, London WC1X 0DA
Hours: Check official website for current opening times and Mail Rail booking slots
Admission: Paid admission; concessionary rates available; Mail Rail requires separate timed booking
Website: postalmuseum.org

Getting there

The museum is a five-minute walk from Farringdon Underground and Overground station (Circle, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines, plus Elizabeth line). It is also accessible from King’s Cross St Pancras (a ten-minute walk) and served by numerous bus routes along Clerkenwell Road and Gray’s Inn Road.

Sources & resources

Find it on the map

Google Maps See the location on a full map → Street View Walk around the place virtually → OpenStreetMap Free community cartography →

We share extraordinary communication stories from our archives and collections.



We are also collecting inspiring ways to connect with each other and providing postal service-inspired entertainment.



Experience Mail Rail from the comfort of your home, take a look at our large items in our off-site shop, explore the items in the collection and revisit our past exhibitions.

Get inspired by our archives and our collection of things to do and do from home.



The Postal Museum (formerly British Postal Museum &amp; Archive) is a postal museum managed by the Postal Heritage Trust. It started in 2004 as The British Postal Museum &amp; Archive and opened in central London as The Postal Museum on 28 July 2017.



The Public Records Act 1838 was the first step in organizing government records, including the civil service department then known as &quot;the post office&quot;. This represents the beginning of what is now The Royal Mail Archive. In 1896, a report on the preservation of the post office records had been produced and the first archivist was appointed. The public records laws of 1958 and 1967 reinforced the need for the post office to keep, catalog and make available its archival documents.



In 1966, the first National Postal Museum (NPM) was established, in part thanks to the donation to the nation of the Phillips Collection of Victorian philately from Reginald M. Phillips. The museum was opened by the Queen on February 19, 1969, in the King Edward Building near St Paul&#39;s Cathedral in London. Over the years a collection of postal materials, uniforms, vehicles and much more has been developed; much more than could be exhibited in the small museum.



In 1998, the King Edward Building was sold and the NPM closed. The collections were preserved and the management of the museum and the archive was combined. This was known as the Post Office Asset Unit (later renamed Consignia, later Royal Mail Group).



Royal Mail Group has decided to transfer the work of this asset unit to an independent charity in light of the evolving mail market and its shift from public service to competitive business. This &quot;Postal Heritage Trust&quot; was born in April 2004 and has been labeled as the British Postal Museum &amp; Archive.

Since 2004, BPMA has expanded its work by providing a program of events, exhibitions, training and web resources.



In February 2016, the BPMA was renamed the Postal Museum, and began building a new museum which opened in 2017 in Clerkenwell, London, near the Mount Pleasant Mail Center. The construction of the museum should have cost &pound; 26 million and consists of two sections.



The Postal Museum has opened to the public a 1 kilometer (0.62 mi) stretch of track in London&#39;s Mail Rail, which was the world&#39;s first driverless electric railway. In the museum section, planned attractions include a commemorative stamp that would have been used if Scotland had won the 1978 FIFA World Cup, telegrams of the night the Titanic sank and a first intercepted edition of Ulysses (banned in the UK until 1936).

https://culturalheritageonline.com/places/the-postal-museum-l4079/

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