Collections News
This page is to let you know about recent archive and museum cataloguing, or new objects we have acquired to enhance our collections. You will find big developments highlighted in the main News section, and upcoming events listed in What's On.
This page was last updated on 5 December 2006.
Recent Acquisitions
Airside
box
As part of our proactive
collecting of contemporary objects, we have recently acquired an ‘Airside box’
for our collection. This was manufactured especially for the BPMA by Broadwater
Mouldings Ltd.
The ‘Airside box’ is a derivative of the glass reinforced plastic indoor letterbox used in stations, shopping centres, hospitals and heritage or leisure complexes. The ‘Airside box’ was designed to be used in airports and for this purpose it has a clear back so that customs officials can keep an eye on what is being posted in the boxes.
The first ‘Airside box’
was installed at Heathrow on Sunday 19 February 1995 and the next morning there
was an official unveiling by the TV presenter, Judith Chalmers. Broadwater
Mouldings kindly donated to us a postcard written by Judith Chalmers which was
the first ever item posted into one of these boxes.
The new box will be available to
view next year at any of the BPMA events at the Museum Store. Thanks go to Broadwater Mouldings for manufacturing
this box for us.
Letter
balance
While we have a number of
balances in our collection, this early letter balance is much more ornate than
most. A cherub is positioned in the centre supporting the beam with a tray for
the letter hanging from this. This balance will be added to the existing
collection and will form part of the forthcoming catalogue of scales and
balances.
Silver medal awarded to Ethel Foyle
Ethel Foyle, a clerk working for the Post Office was given this medal for coming in first place in ‘open competition’. Open competition was a recruitment method used for many years by the Post Office. It involved hopeful candidates sitting examinations before being considered for a job.
The Royal Mail Archive holds a number of records on this recruitment method. Ethel was awarded her medal in 1903. It is made of sterling silver and comes in a special presentation case. Ethel Foyle was of the family who owned the Foyle’s book shop on Charing Cross Road, London for many years.
50,000 records now available online!
Over 50,000 descriptions of objects and records
held by the BPMA are now available via our online catalogue. This represents a
real milestone and is due to the hard work of everyone involved in
cataloguing the BPMA’s collections.
The collections which took us
beyond the 50,000 mark were POST 30 (Minuted papers England & Wales) and the
first part of POST 150 (Victorian Stamp Registration
sheets).
POST 118 – Post Office: Photograph Library - update
Earlier this year over 1,000
descriptions of photographs contained within POST 118 were added to our online catalogue. These descriptions did not
at that time include digitised images of the photographs
themselves.
In late November, however over
550 digitised images were uploaded to the catalogue. This means that users
can now see the actual photographs alongside their descriptions
online.
These images are from photographic prints in our collection. We do not as yet have the facilities to scan the remaining photographs for which we only have glass negatives. We hope to be able to scan these in the near future and
add them to the online catalogue.
POST 89: Broadcasting
Cataloguing work is underway on
POST 89, the records concerning the role of the Post Office in broadcasting. The
earliest of these records outline initial discussions about
transmitting stations, licence applications and the type and estimated cost of
apparatus.
The class overall provides a record of both
technological developments, and debates over funding and the influence of a national broadcasting service. Reports
of the Sykes, Crawford and Ullswater Committees to review the British
Broadcasting Company’s (BBC) monopoly, its funding and the service provided,
also chart the progress of the corporation.
At a more personal level, the class contains books detailing licence applications from individuals and applications for refunds of licence fees in exceptional circumstances. The records demonstrate the centrality of the broadcasting service in everyday life.