Take a trip on the mini mail train at London’s newest museum, The Postal Museum.
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One of the great things about London is all the small, hidden museums. One such museum, London’s newest, is The Postal Museum. If you are thinking about where to take kids in London you can’t go wrong.
Based near the sorting office at Mount Pleasant in Clerkenwell, The Postal Museum, or Post Office Museum, charts over 500 years of the postal service in England from the time when King Henry VIII first came up with the idea of private delivery boys to the present day.
The great thing about the museum is that it is very interactive with lots of opportunities to get involved and try things out. I had terrific fun trying on the various postal uniforms and sending a message through the vacuum delivery service. You can also put your head on a stamp and they will email it to you!
Did you know that the first postage stamp in the world, the penny black, was invented by a Scotsman called James Chalmers. You can see the very first engraving plates here!
The post office was also in charge of the telephone services and there are telephone boxes which take you back to your childhood. Adults and children alike can both have great fun in this wonderful museum.
Indeed, if you had a family member who worked in the post office you can use the research facility upstairs free of charge to look through all the post office records.
Then, don’t forget to book your ticket for the mail train! The Postal Museum Mail Train is the highlight of the visit.A huge network of automated electric trains running right under central London. Originally designed just for the mail but now adapted to carry people. It’s still a tight squeeze though!
There are games for kids to play, dressing up as a postman and delivering the mail into the right boxes on the sorting train with a moving floor and even a creche for younger kids to run around it where they have created a whole mini postal town.
Currently in the temporary exhibition space is Voices From The Deep. The largest collection of undelivered mail ever discovered. It is guest curated by Dr Sean Kingsley who got involved when the goods ship SS Gairsoppa was discovered having been shipwrecked during the second world war travelling from India.
And don’t forget Mr Tibbs the post office cat! He was paid one shilling a week to catch mice! If you submit a photo of your cat to the instagram competition you can win a special kitty size post office hat for your cat!
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