please empty your brain below
Most post offices have some way of posting mail inside the office these days - whether it be a proper red box, something attached to a self-service machine, or a mail sack hanging from a frame. I'm not sure if there necessarily needs to be a box outside.

martin | 20.08.14 - 7:00 a.m. | #

The 'espresso bar' appears to be just another fried chicken shop...

EskimoPie | 20.08.14 - 8:00 a.m. | #

My favourite Post Office+something else combo is in the Yorkshire Dales where, by day you can post parcels and pay your Vehicle Excise Duty, and by night you can check in for your bed in the YHA.

Alas the YHA's put the place up for sale so who knows how long this will continue.

Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 20.08.14 - 8:15 a.m. | #

Stroudley Walk sounds as if it's ripe for conversion into yet another block of flats, sorry 'superior appartments' - for investment purposes of rich Chinese!

What price a London council actually interested in housing the citizens? Where are those who nurse in the central London hospitals (among other low income, high value job, people) supposed to live?

Bronchitikat | Homepage | 20.08.14 - 9:31 a.m. | #

I wouldn't hold your breath for the prospect of the letter box moving closer to the new Post Office. In my experience of other such closures, the two parts of Royal Mail definitely don't appear to talk to each other.

The other issue you haven't considered is the effect on the Royal Mail counter staff. The new ones will be employees of Nisa, probably on lower pay and poorer conditions of employment. If the employees of the former Crown Office didn't relish the prospects of transferring on poorer terms, they will have been offered compulsory redundancy.

How nice.

Petras409 | 20.08.14 - 9:57 a.m. | #

the Post Office isn't part of Royal Mail - the former is government owned, the latter a plc.

martin | 20.08.14 - 10:05 a.m. | #

Petras409, this is a bit of a complicated issue, as the costs of staffing will ultimately be picked up by the consumer. There is a play off between what is fair to the existing staff and what is fair to the people using the Post Office.

Messiah | 20.08.14 - 10:23 a.m. | #

What is a 'post office' and what is it used for?

Richard | Homepage | 20.08.14 - 10:34 a.m. | #

The privatised post office in Epsom is utterly foul. Its turned into a scruffy supermarket with assorted sub lets inside. The first thing that greets you at the door is a kiosk that in bright yellow plastic signs offers to give you cash for gold.

Ian Brooker | 20.08.14 - 12:42 p.m. | #

The post office at Bridge of Orchy in the Highlands (open for two hours every Tuesday) is in the church.

The village also has a hotel, a village hall, a fire station, a school (closed), and a railway station, but only half a dozen houses.

I doubt the queues in the post office are very long

timbo | 20.08.14 - 2:08 p.m. | #

Bridge of Orchy Post Office has clearly gone up in the world since I was there in 2009. It was in a rather grim portakabin back then!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bods/3744317320/

Quite a few rural ones are now in pubs - I was in the Bell in the Ingleby Cross once and they ran the post office three mornings a week. Absolutely no sign that they did. No counter, nothing. They probably just whisked out a set of scales and shove them on the bar on the appropriate days.

That said, twenty odd years ago I was in a rural pub which did have a proper post office counter at the end of its bar. Screen and everything. Fact you could just leap over the bar and get into it meant the screen was rather pointless.

Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 20.08.14 - 2:19 p.m. | #

Mobile post offices like BoO are run as outstations from another post office nearby - Crianlarich in BoO's case. The staff bring the necessary equipment with them, rather than bring it out from behind the altar/bar/cleaner's cupboard/whatever.

timbo | 20.08.14 - 3:56 p.m. | #

Seems the new Bow Post Office went and opened today after all.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 20.08.14 - 7:20 p.m. | #

The book "Estates" by journalist Lynsey Hanley contains a longish polemic about the ill-starred "redevelopment" of Stroudley Walk and the surrounding area, including that utterly moribund looking tower block opposite. The pub gets a mention.

Matt | 20.08.14 - 11:50 p.m. | #

On a recent trip to the area I was surprised by the parking restrictions which allowed parking only on a Friday between midday and 2pm. Why choose these particular hours? I can't imagine it's to aid the shops. Loading wouldn't be covered under general parking rules. I thought it could be for a community centre but surely that would be more widely used.

I also notice that a short walk away to the Coventry Cross estate, the shops facing the A12 are starting to cover the matching red and white signs above their windows. I believe these were added when the block was reclad and repainted in time for the Olympic lanes to give visiting signatories a better view of Tower Hamlets and add a touch of uniformity to the shops.

| 21.08.14 - 8:40 a.m. | #

Love your description of "Mrs Singh".

Kim | 21.08.14 - 11:20 a.m. | #

I only recently discovered the poor downrodden Bow Post Office in Stroudley Walk. We were in Devas Street near Bromley-by-Bow station and rather surprised to be told that the nearest post office was as far away as Stroudley Walk - go to the end of there, turn left, then right and it's hidden in a parade of scruffy shops. Now it's moved even further away and across a busy main road. There was a mighty queue in there when we used it, so it was obviously popular, or at least well-used, and I suppose it's faded interior is explained by the fact that it was shortly to close. Of all things, we needed a Postal Order, something I'd not encountered since I was a child, because the local Poplar Harca housing office wouldn't take a card - or cash!

Speaking of whom, PH seem to have grand plans to regenerate the area, so maybe a 21st century state of the art postal service outlet will reappear among the proposed new retail facilities. Speaking of the new Stroudley Walk:

"A new 16 storey tower acts as a focal point for the area - an architectural landmark to signal the neighbourhood centre’s revival. The regeneration of the rundown but important neighbourhood hub is central to the project’s aims. The strategy envisages the re-emergence of the street: its edges are realigned with buildings and it becomes a pedestrian and cycle priority route, with controlled vehicle access. The street is informally defined by hard and soft landscape features and it links a hierarchy of public spaces for play and leisure."

Or so they say.

ActonMan | 21.08.14 - 4:07 p.m. | #

Thinking back to when I lived on the western boundary of E3, I used to cross the canal into deepest Stepney to use a post office.

EskimoPie | 21.08.14 - 11:55 p.m. | #

@Richard,

A post office is used to post items by recorded or special delivery, or bulky items, and to buy stamps of odd values. It is also a provider of accurate and free-to-use weighing scales (in some cases up to 30kg) should one require such things.

John | 22.08.14 - 9:47 a.m. | #

Poor old forgotten Bromley. It seems as though everywhere in E3 is "Bow" these days. Maybe they'll rename the tube station "Bow-by-Bow".

langdon | 26.08.14 - 4:27 p.m. | #











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