Wednesday 3 June 2015

Stamps to feature on 50 postboxes across the UK

As widely reported in this morning's press and online media, Royal Mail is installing plaques on
postboxes across the country to mark the 50th anniversary of special stamps.

Each of the 50 plaques will feature a stamp connected to the village, town or city, ranging from London and Leeds to Llandudno and Blackpool.

Stamps on the postboxes include images of Winston Churchill, Bagpuss, Dylan Thomas, Robert Burns, the Giant’s Causeway, York Minster and Sherlock Holmes.

Over 2,600 special stamps have been included in the programme over the past 50 years, with every new stamp design approved by the Queen before it is issued.  (See Royal Mail Special Stamps microsite.)

The full list of stamps and locations as provided by Royal Mail.  Some of these are not very precise, so we will welcome reports of more precise locations, and identification of which stamp (eg Edinburgh Castle) if you find one.
               

Sad to note the absence of Wales and Northern Ireland from this list when there have been plenty of stamps with identifiable locations in both.

And a warning to all bloggers - don't rely on the press release being correct. After I alerted RM through social media to the absence of Llandudno, the site was updated with the missing locations, including Woodstock, and Wales and Northern Ireland. Didn't occur to me to actually count the number of lines in the table!


UPDATE 8 June 2015
Brian has sent details of another postbox which has a plate on it (see right).  This is in London's Fleet Street, near the old Daily Express building.

"This plaque commemorates the bicentenary of the birth of Anthony Trollope(1815-1882) who introduced pillar boxes to the United Kingdom in 1852.

In 1855 this street became one of the first in London to have a pillar box." 

UPDATE 12 JUNE
Royal Mail are using social media to keep people updated.  A lot of links are in the 'comments' below; I don't have time to add all the pictures to the blog at this time, but may do a page later. Thanks to our Anonymous contributors.

UPDATE 1 July 2024!   The Royal Mail mini-website has gone, although you can get through to what it looked like via the Wayback Archive.  But here is a photo that MM took in Keswick recently (yes, 2024) showing the Derwentwater stamp.  The URL on the postbox is no longer valid - indeed the root is now a site in Indonesian!  I wouldn't suggest you click through that.

Winston Churchill
Woodstock, Oxfordshire
Millennium Centre
Cardiff
Dylan Thomas
Swansea
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct
Wrexham
Llandudno Pier
Llandudno
Tenby Lifeboat
Tenby
CS Lewis Narnia
Belfast
Peace Bridge
Derry/Londonderry
The Giant’s Causeway
Antrim
Armagh Observatory
Armagh
Edinburgh Castle    
Edinburgh       
Glasgow Tram    
Glasgow
Comics, Beano
Dundee       
Andy Murray at  Wimbledon
Dunblane       
Sir Walter Scott
Abbotsford, Scottish Borders
Golf            
St Andrews
Robert Burns        
Alloway, Ayr       
Blackpool Tower    
Blackpool
Manchester Town Hall
Manchester
Liverpool Cathedral    
Liverpool   
Richard Arkwright inventor
Preston
Wallace and Gromit    
Bristol
Eddystone Lighthouse
Plymouth
Met Office        
Exeter
Abbotsbury Swannery
Abbotsbury, Dorset
Chamberlain Square    
Birmingham
Biddulph Grange    
Stoke
Severn Valley Railway
Worcester Kidderminster
William Shakespeare
Stratford upon Avon
Charles Darwin    
Shrewsbury
Leicester University    
Leicester
The Oak Stamp    
Nottinghamshire
Ely Cathedral        
Ely       
E-type Jaguar    
Coventry
Max Perutz        
Cambridge
York Minster        
York   (see below)
High Level Bridge    
Newcastle
Nicola Adams Olympics
Leeds
Jessica Ennis Olympics
Sheffield
The Deep        
Hull
Derwentwater    
Lake District (see below)
Wembley        
Wembley
Bagpuss        
Canterbury
World Wildlife Fund    
Woking
Magna Carta        
Runnymede       
Timekeeper        
Greenwich
Queen’s Jubilee stamp
London
50th ann of the BBC    
Portland Place, London
Sherlock Holmes    
Baker St, London
Mary Seacole        
Brixton, London
Keswick, Cumbria, postbox still adorned with the poster showing the 1981 National Trust Derwentwater stamp advertising the old 50 years of Royal Mail Special Stamps website.

24 July 2024: MM has been on his travels again, and stumbled across this box in York

York postbox still adorned with the poster showing the A-Z of the UK 2012, York Minster stamp advertising the old 50 years of Royal Mail Special Stamps website.




40 comments:

  1. Is from "London and Leeds to Lladudno and Blackpool" a quote from Royal Mail as, of course, Lladudno IS in Wales so perhaps there are some Welsh sites yet to be announced?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sadly the press release that I saw on their website was incomplete :-( List now updated.

      Delete
  2. At the risk of sounding pompous which I suppose I have a tendency towards, this blog is a wonderful example of why children should be encouraged to collect stamps not just for pleasure but for their education value. Looking at the list of depicted stamps I saw that CS Lewis/Narnia is represented on a Belfast post box. What on earth, I asked myself, had CS Lewis to do with Belfast? I googled and discovered that he was born there and the scenery of Northern Ireland inspired his vision of Narnia. Well, I never knew that - the power of stamps as educational tools even for an old man like me - wonderful aren't they? Even if press releases are sometimes wrong.

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  3. I looked at this and scratched my head. Can someone explain how the Royal Mail arrive at 50 years?

    The first Commemoratives were the British Empire Exhibition stamps of 1924, with further infrequent issues in 1925, 1929, 1935, 1937 etc.

    There appear to be infrequent sets in the late 1950s and early 1960s with 1963 seeing a dramatic increase in issues. That year saw the launch of the First Day of Issue postmark and 1964 saw the introduction of the Presentation Pack but they celebrate 50 years of Special issues just back to 1965?

    I must admit I have noticed of late that most press releases by Royal Mail (and the Royal Mint) are really just advertising features and often don’t let facts get in the way of a good headline. Is there any valid reason why they have only started counting from 1965, aside from the fact 50th Anniversary reads better than 91st?

    Mark

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I suppose I ought to have included a link to Royal Mail's special stamp microsite. I'll do that. But to quote from their 'stamps' home page:

      "2015 marks the 50th anniversary of Royal Mail’s modern Special Stamp programme, which celebrates the UK and our national character. A total of 2,663 Special Stamps have been issued since July 1965."

      I think they might have added the word 'modern' since they first splashed this microsite earlier in the year and people alerted them to the 1924/25/29/35/37 etc special commemorative stamps.

      Delete
  4. The second paragraph here explains how they arrive at the criteria for Modern commemoratives http://rmspecialstamps.com/##infoModal.

    I can’t help thinking RM misses an opportunity here, they could have issued a miniature sheet featuring the 1965 Churchill stamps which would have dealt with two anniversaries in one go.

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  5. 1965 was the point at which Tony Benn, as Postmaster General, laid down criteria for the subject matter of special stamps and that they would be issued on a regular basis (rather than sporadically).

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  6. Llandudno is up my way.... I will go forth and look within the next week or so

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    Replies
    1. I have been. I found it. I was not impressed. Looked very plasticky and also looked out of place on the pillar box (not nicely fixed, bit like an ill-fitting item of clothing - shirt/blouse bulging at the buttons).

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    2. Oh come on everybody lets get real for once, this is no better than moving the deck chairs on the titanic! What a waste of time money and effort, didn't the Royal mail also come up with the idea that they would put posters of Royal Mail Vans to advertise new issues, and hey presto off the public go to the local post office and find they cant buy commemorative stamps over the counter. Things started to go wrong when the Philatelic Counters were closed down and all the staff with years of philatelic experience were moved to other duties, I don't recall seeing any effort by any collectors to fight the closing down and look where it has got us with 'collectibles' available from the Bureau in Edinburgh and what a lovely book the price lists makes with 86 pages of dross from cufflinks to money boxes and soft toys! a few plastic plaques stuck on the side of some post boxes is not going to make any difference to anything!.

      Delete
  7. Thought this site of be of interest, http://www.postboxfinder.co.uk/. Whilst it doesn’t give details of the post boxes with the panels or the gold post boxes, it does give the location of post boxes in general, so give you a clue as to where to look. Maybe we could get them to add these details, or we could hope that Royal Mail will produce a map telling people where these boxes are located, the photo’s they upload to twitter don’t usually reveal the location (except for Liverpool Cathedral, which you could make a reasoned guess). RM could also include Post Boxes with other plaques attached, such as the Darwin one in Kent & The Trollope one in Fleet Street.

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  8. I asked Royal Mail on the day this was first announced for a list of the reference numbers for all of the boxes that would have a plaque applied, so that we would know the precise locations. I'm still waiting ... !

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  9. I have been in the centre of Birmingham today and visited Chamberlain Square, alleged site of the postbox with Birmingham's special plaque attached to it. I spent a few minutes searching the square for the post box and I am convinced that there is no postbox at all in the Square, I also looked around Victoria Square which is next door to Chamberlain Square without any success (there are 2 postboxes built into the wall of the post office there but no plaque attached to them). So the mention of Birmingham in the list is a mystery to me. I will be in Stratford-upon-Avon tomorrow so I will try to track down the Shakespeare postbox.

    ReplyDelete
  10. It’s nice that they are plugging them on twitter, it would be even nicer if they gave more details of the locations. Judging by the ones they publicised already, there being done piecemeal.

    Armagh, Armagh Observatory - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/607913535931318273

    Cambridge, Max Perutz - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/606843796840685569

    Glasgow, Glasgow Tram - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/606848655778279424

    Leeds, Nicola Adams Olympics - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/605757376222887936

    Leicester, University of Leicester - https://twitter.com/UoLNewsCentre/status/608259069015683072
    From the UoL blog ‘The plaque was installed on the postbox at University Road, Leicester, next to the University entrance’

    Liverpool, Liverpool Cathedral - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/606107141737455616

    Llandudno, Llandudno Pier - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/607945299932389376

    Sheffield, Jessica Ennis Olympics - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/607934272729694208

    Shrewsbury, Charles Darwin - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/606019295873744896

    Stratford upon Avon, William Shakespeare - https://twitter.com/tombod/status/606812733133225984

    Woking, World Wildlife Fund - https://twitter.com/wwf_uk/status/606105139439640576

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Judging by the ones they publicised already, there being done piecemeal."

      Well there is only one guy and a screwdriver, so I expect he is doing a lot of travelling. :-D

      Delete
  11. By the look of things in Birmingham, the guy with the screwdriver also needs to install a postbox as well. Perhaps he's got a sonic screwdriver.

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  12. Went to Abbotsbury yesterday; the village apparently only has two wall boxes. There is no plaque yet and very little room to put one. The PO there (which doesn't have a postbox) knew nothing about it but was grateful for the information.

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  13. A few more have been publicised

    Preston, Richard Arkwright - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/608561153699115008

    Bristol, Wallace & Gromit - https://twitter.com/aardman/status/608212286373818368
    Looks like man with drill and screwdriver failed to turn up

    Cardiff, Millennium Centre (from Celebrating Wales M/S) - https://twitter.com/AssemblyWales/status/608600174684987392
    Tweet says ‘plaque at Bute Place’

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cardiff

      https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.464108,-3.160003,3a,75y,15.13h,66.77t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxMZc1hK2vbYVBnzlpezpFA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

      Delete
  14. And a couple more,

    Brixton (London), Mary Seacole - https://twitter.com/MayorLBLambeth/status/608990309205352448
    Tweet gives location as 10 Acre Lane, Brixton

    Derry/Londonderry, Peace Bridge - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/609026069807505410

    ReplyDelete
  15. Man with drill, screwdriver and plaques has been to

    Dunblane, Andy's Wimbledon win M/S
    https://twitter.com/judmoo/status/609283481173143552

    Alloway (Ayr), Robert Burns - https://twitter.com/CorriWilsonSNP/status/609326885890334720

    ReplyDelete
  16. A slow start to the week

    Blackpool, Blackpool Tower - https://twitter.com/tombod/status/610388495031500800
    Edinburgh, Edinburgh Castle - https://twitter.com/edinburghcastle/status/610451903474987008

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not sure this Royal Mail Tweet (17/06/15) is completely accurate, but it gives the location as Tudor Square in Blackpool as the location.
      https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/611083446581112832

      Delete
    2. It's actually Talbot Square, part of which has a view of the tower. See https://goo.gl/maps/0HRAq and rotate and move bit further away and you can see the tower.

      Delete
    3. They’ve deleted it now, and tweeted a new version, https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/611126971393802240

      Delete
  17. Kidderminster (not Worcester as stated by RM), Severn Valley Railway https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/610839303200108544

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thought it was a bit odd, as the SVR doesn't go to Worcester! Runs from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth !

      Delete
  18. Thanks to everybody for their continued monitoring of this saga, and the corrections!

    ReplyDelete
  19. I feel sorry for the postboxes! Wouldn't it have been better to have posters up in post offices (even in the window), than for postboxes to be drilled, .... ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's probably a pre-cursor to fitting similar sized advertising panels to all postboxes, to maximise revenues!

      Delete
  20. The last two for this week

    Canterbury, Bagpuss - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/611842336167956480
    Swansea, Dylan Thomas - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/611917907233230848

    ReplyDelete
  21. Only one today

    Tenby, RNLI - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/612995415252860928
    Tweet gives location as Tudor Square, Tenby

    ReplyDelete
  22. Wednesday’s offering

    Kelso (announced as being Abbotsford), Sir Walter Scott - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/613731497883865088

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That tweet has been deleted and retweeted today as https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/613980447891156992.
      'direct decendant' changed to 'his relation'

      Delete
  23. Exeter Met Office in Ambassador Drive

    https://goo.gl/maps/XBZVA

    ReplyDelete
  24. Only 50 plaques? quite a limited edition for the Royal Mail, how long before they start disappearing and turning up in collections! better still cart off the whole box! Stranger things have ended up in the back gardens of collectors.

    ReplyDelete
  25. This month’s ‘Stamp Magazine’ has a feature on Page 22, they list Wrexham & Plymouth in addition to those listed above. This months ‘Stamp & Coin Mart’ also features them on page 8, though it doesn’t list any sites.

    ReplyDelete
  26. After a short break, the plaques are back
    Dundee, Comics (the Beano) - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/619503715612016640

    ReplyDelete
  27. Slowly but surely the remaining plaques are being publicised.

    Woodstock (Oxfordshire), Winston Churchill - https://twitter.com/royalmailnews/status/625366989628944384

    ReplyDelete
  28. A new post box plaque
    https://www.myroyalmail.com/news/2017/10/remembering-hero

    ReplyDelete

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