Mount Pleasant Mail Centre
The Mount Pleasant Mail Centre (often shortened as Mount Pleasant, known internally as the Mount
Location
It is located on a twelve-acre site in the Mount Pleasant area of Clerkenwell, 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, who had been instrumental in establishing the parcel post service in 1882.[4]
19th century
In the mid-1880s the parcel sorting office was located in the cramped basement of
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).[5] The street called Mount Pleasant had gained its name ironically in the 1730s after locals had begun to dump cinders and other refuse.[6]
The Post Office (Sites) Act 1889 required the Post Office to provide a portion of the site, or £10,000, to London County Council 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.[7]
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
Meanwhile, the Post Office began to erect its own buildings on the site (designed for the most part by
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
During the
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 for sorting purposes with the installation of a machine.
21st century
The
In 2017 a new Postal Museum 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.
Postal administration
The site is now the
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.[10][11] 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.[12] The remaining operational part of the site was due to be modernised at the same time.[13]
After a protracted dispute over affordable housing, development of the site, to include some 680 homes and named 'Postmark', began in 2018.[14] The first phase, alongside Phoenix Place, was completed in 2021. The project as a whole is scheduled for completion in 2024.[15]
References
- ^ "Mount Pleasant Mail Centre".
- ^ "Future efficient costs of Royal Mail's Regulated Mail Activities" (PDF).
- ^ "Mount Pleasant Sorting Office".
- ^ a b c d e f Temple, Philip, ed. (2008). "Mount Pleasant Sorting Office". Survey of London volume XLVII: Northern Clerkenwell and Pentonville. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. pp. 42–51.
- ^ "INFORMATION SHEET NO 9: Headquarters of the Post Office" (PDF). Great Britain Philatelic Society. Post Office Archives 1988. Retrieved 25 May 2023.
- ^ "Mount Pleasant, Islington/Camden". Retrieved 19 November 2018.
- John James Sexby. Municipal Parks, Gardens, and Open Spaces of London. p. 130.
- ^ Denyer, C. H. (July 1895). "Money Order Office Gossip and History (Part III)". St Martin's-le-Grand: the Post Office Magazine. V (19): 265–266.
- ^ Forty-fourth Report of the Postmaster General on the Post Office. London: HMSO. 1898. p. 24.
- ^ "Royal Mail criticised over £32m development plans". 19 March 2013.
- TheGuardian.com. 13 May 2012.
- ^ "Mount Pleasant: Welcome to the Exhibition" (PDF). Consultation hub. London Borough of Camden. Retrieved 29 May 2023.
- ^ "CBI visit to the Mount".
- ^ Spittles, David (3 July 2018). "A first-class address: new homes on former Royal Mail site at Mount Pleasant to launch this summer". Evening Standard. Retrieved 25 May 2023.
- ^ "Proposals for Mount Pleasant". Postmark London. Taylor Wimpey.
External links
- Mount Pleasant, an exhibition curated by the British Postal Museum & Archive