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The Mount Pleasant Mail Centre (often shortened as Mount Pleasant, known internally as the Mount and officially known as the London Central Mail Centre) is a mail centre operated by
Royal Mail Royal Mail Group Limited, trading as Royal Mail, is a British postal service and courier company. It is owned by International Distribution Services. It operates the brands Royal Mail (letters and parcels) and Parcelforce Worldwide (parcels) ...
in
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, England. The site has previously operated as one of the largest
sorting office A sorting office or processing and distribution center (P&DC; name used by the United States Postal Service (USPS)) is any location where postal operators bring mail after collection for sorting into batches for delivery to the addressee, whic ...
s in the world. It is located in the
London Borough of Islington The London Borough of Islington ( ) is a London borough, borough in North London, England. Forming part of Inner London, Islington has an estimated population of 215,667. It was formed in 1965, under the London Government Act 1963, by the amalg ...
, on the boundary with the
London Borough of Camden The London Borough of Camden () is a London boroughs, borough in Inner London, England. Camden Town Hall, on Euston Road, lies north of Charing Cross. The borough was established on 1 April 1965 from the former Metropolitan boroughs of the Cou ...
.


Location

It is located on a twelve-acre site in the Mount Pleasant area of
Clerkenwell Clerkenwell ( ) is an area of central London, England. Clerkenwell was an Civil Parish#Ancient parishes, ancient parish from the medieval period onwards, and now forms the south-western part of the London Borough of Islington. The St James's C ...
, at the junction between Farringdon Road and Rosebery Avenue and opposite Exmouth Market.


History

The mail centre stands on the site of the former Coldbath Fields Prison that ceased to function in 1885. Its potential use for Post Office purposes was championed by Frederick Ebenezer Baines, Assistant Secretary of the
General Post Office The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Established in England in the 17th century, the GPO was a state monopoly covering the dispatch of items from a specific ...
, who had been instrumental in establishing the
parcel post Parcel post is a postal service for mail that is too heavy for normal letter post. It is usually slower than letter post. The development of the parcel post is closely connected with the development of the railway network which enabled parcels to ...
service in 1882.


19th century

In the mid-1880s the parcel sorting office was located in the cramped basement of GPO East in St. Martin's Le Grand; Baines was actively seeking to remove it, preferably to a spacious site close to some of the main London railway termini. The Coldbath Fields Prison site fitted these criteria. In 1887 the Treasury sanctioned the use of the former
treadmill A treadmill is a device generally used for walking, running, or climbing while staying in the same place. Treadmills were introduced before the development of powered machines to harness the power of animals or humans to do work, often a type of ...
house as a temporary parcel sorting office, and the GPO moved in in time to meet the Christmas rush. The sale of the rest of the site had to wait until an act of Parliament, the ( 52 & 53 Vict. c. ccix), was passed. The centre was then officially opened on 30 August 1889. The Post Office clerks did not like the name Coldbath Fields, which was associated with the prison in the public mind, so Baines took the name Mount Pleasant from an adjacent street (the name-change being announced in November that year). The street called Mount Pleasant had gained its name ironically in the 1730s after locals had begun to dump cinders and other refuse. The Post Office (Sites) Act 1889 required the Post Office to provide a portion of the site, or £10,000, to
London County Council The London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today ...
for use as open space. The Post Office chose to retain the entire site, and provided the funds, which were used to purchase Spa Green Gardens in
Clerkenwell Clerkenwell ( ) is an area of central London, England. Clerkenwell was an Civil Parish#Ancient parishes, ancient parish from the medieval period onwards, and now forms the south-western part of the London Borough of Islington. The St James's C ...
. To begin with the prison buildings were used to house various Post Office departments: the prison bakehouse became the office of the Post Office Stores Department, the
governor A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...
's house was used by the Telegraph Superintending Engineer (whose workshops expanded into other buildings in the eastern corner of the site); the chapel housed a hundred clerks of the Money Order Office (with a similar number being accommodated in what had been the governor's offices on the floors below), while the adjacent long cell-block was used for postal stores. (The Money Order Office moved out in 1897 to temporary accommodation in Fore Street; whereupon the stores department moved into the chapel and other vacated areas, and the cell-block was demolished.) Meanwhile, the Post Office began to erect its own buildings on the site (designed for the most part by Sir Henry Tanner, principal architect of the
Office of Works The Office of Works was an organisation responsible for structures and exterior spaces, first established as part of the English royal household in 1378 to oversee the building and maintenance of the royal castles and residences. In 1832 it be ...
): a Telegraph Factory was built in 1890–92 in the southern corner of the site; and from 1889 to 1900 a vast new Parcel Office was built, in stages from north to south, over the whole of the northern (north-west) half of the site. (In spite of its name, the third and final section of the building was designed to accommodate the sorting of letters for the Inland section of the GPO, which was transferred here from St. Martin's Le Grand in 1900.) When finished the building was square in plan, with corner pavilions containing offices and ancillary services, and the central areas used for sorting. Two-thirds of the building was two storeys high, but the final section was double that height. On either side were glass-covered loading bays for the mail vans. Following its completion the Postmaster General observed that:


20th century

Some of the original prison buildings survived into the 20th century. The prison gate was demolished in 1901 for an extension to the Telegraph Factory; but the governor's house and the chapel lasted through the
First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
. Not long afterwards, however, they too were swept away (the Stores Department having moved out in 1915) for the building of a new Letter Sorting Office, designed by A. R. Myers, which was built (again in stages) across the southern half of the site, beginning in 1920. (The last vestiges of the prison were demolished in 1929.) In contrast to the red-brick Parcel Office, the new Letter Sorting Office was built in
reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...
; the eastern half was completed in 1926, the steel-framed western half in 1934. The Letter Sorting Office, said at the time to be the largest in Europe and the British Empire, was opened in November that year by the Duke and Duchess of York. It contained the latest mechanised equipment for sorting and distributing mail. A public
post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
was built on the corner of Rosebery Avenue and Farringdon Road as part of the same complex of buildings, which opened in 1937. During the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
the Parcel Office was severely damaged by bombing raids in 1940 and 1943. By 1944 it had been rebuilt (at ground-floor level only) and brought back into use. An intended rebuild never took place, and eventually (in 1984) most of the parcel sorting was moved to
Brent Cross Brent Cross is a major traffic interchange and area in the London Borough of Barnet, England. Originally the name of a crossroads, it is located a mile from the centres of Hendon and Golders Green. Notably, the Brent Cross Shopping Centre, ...
and the remains of Tanner's building were demolished. Subsequently the northern half of the site has functioned mainly as a van park (the last remaining parcel work was removed from Mount Pleasant to
Camden Town Camden Town () is an area in the London Borough of Camden, around north-northwest of Charing Cross. Historically in Middlesex, it is identified in the London Plan as one of 34 major centres in Greater London. Laid out as a residential distri ...
in 1996). From 1927 to 2003, Mount Pleasant was the central station and depot on the London Post Office Railway, which connected a number of Royal Mail offices and railways stations across London. In 1979 Mount Pleasant pioneered the use of
optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...
for sorting purposes with the installation of a machine.


21st century

The art-deco Letter Sorting Office building remains in use, albeit much altered, both externally (with plastic windows and cladding) and internally. In 2017 a new
Postal Museum A postal museum is a museum dedicated to the display of objects relating to the postal service. A subcategory of postal museums are philatelic museums, which focus on philately and postage stamps. List of postal and philatelic museums Afric ...
was opened on the site, located in Freeling House on the back of the sorting office. It provides public access below ground to the Post Office Railway depot, which now operates as a
heritage railway A heritage railway or heritage railroad (U.S. usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) ...
.


Postal administration

The site is now the mail centre of the
EC postcode area The EC (Eastern Central) postcode area, also known as the London EC postal area, is a group of postcode districts in central London, England. It includes almost all of the City of London and parts of the London boroughs of Islington, Camden, ...
, the
N postcode area The N (Northern) postcode area, also known as the London N postcode area, is the part of the London postal district, London post town covering part of North London, England. It is a group of 25 postcode districts which covers around 17,429 live ...
, the W1 postcode district and the
WC postcode area The WC (Western Central) postcode area, also known as the London WC postcode area, is a group of postcode districts in central London, England. The area covered is of high density development, and includes parts of the City of Westminster and th ...
.


Future

In 2012 Royal Mail proposed selling off the northern half of the site, together with land to the west (on the other side of Phoenix Place) for residential and commercial redevelopment. The sites being sold for redevelopment had been mainly used for operational and staff vehicle parking, which was to be relocated underground as part of the scheme. The remaining operational part of the site was due to be modernised at the same time. After a protracted dispute over affordable housing, development of the site, to include some 680 homes and named 'Postmark', began in 2018. The first phase, alongside Phoenix Place, was completed in 2021. The project as a whole is scheduled for completion in 2024.


References


External links


Mount Pleasant
an exhibition curated by the British Postal Museum & Archive {{coord, 51, 31, 29, N, 0, 06, 43, W, region:GB_type:landmark, display=title Royal Mail Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Islington Government buildings completed in 1889 Infrastructure in London Post office buildings in the United Kingdom Sorting offices