PALATIAL BUILDING FOR VICTORIA STREET

POSTAL AND TELEGRAPH WORK TO BE COMBINED

Many years ago the people were led to hope for a decent and respectable Post Office in Grimsby, a building that would be a credit to the Postal Authorities and the town, and adequate for the business to be transacted. That hope has long been deferred, we have put up with a kind of truncated affair, the head at one end of the town, the body at the other, and strangers have marvelled at what they have termed a Chinese puzzle, wondering how it was that the head office was closed two hours before a secondary office, and why it should be necessary to send telegrams from the head office to the secondary office before they could be despatched to distant towns.

Now our hopes are to be realised; the repeated applications and the energetic and enthusiastic work of the Postmaster is to bear fruit-Grimsby Post Office is to be built during the present year.

The plans have been drawn by J Rutherford. Esq H.M Office of Works, tenders advertised for, and within a few days we may expect to see the old house in Victoria Street, next to Union of London and Smiths bank, with its dark looking windows and woebegone, ghost haunted appearance, gradually disappearing under the process of demolition, and the builders busy with the new erection.

From the print we have this morning it will be seen that the new office will be of handsome character, with a Renaissant facade, the whole of the massive stone front being in harmony with the bank premises, whilst yet remaining sufficiently distinct to secure individual attention.

Portland stone will be the material used, and the deep grooving in the face of the first storey will impart an idea of strength and solidity. Standing upon this are two upper stories, faced and supported by six square columns with capitals resembling the Ionic in design, and above these continued within a mansard roof, a fourth storey. A glance at our representation will show the front to be dignified and commanding without being too ornate, and the only criticism one can suggest is with regard to the smallness of the doors.

The ground plan shows that the building, that is the Public Offices and Posting Halls, extends to a distance of 140 feet, beyond which it continues to Osborne Street, having a rather large frontage to that street. Immediately on entering from Victoria street the general office is reached, a large counter dividing the public from the clerks.

The chief clerk's office is to the right, whilst at the rear is a spacious and commodious sorting and postmens hall, together with accountants office and assistant superintendents enclosure. Here the building widens out, there is an annexe for the foreign parcels trade, a very large and important branch of work at Grimsby, a boys retiring room,delivery room, stores room, and all of them on a liberal scale and well appointed. Beyond these and facing Osborne street, according to the plan, are a large covered yard and and engine room in connection with the pneumatic telegram tubes, and an open yard, truck shelter, and basket store.

This ground floor alone will provide more room for postal work than at present exists in the St. Mary's gate and Victoria street offices doubled. On the second storey is the postmasters room shown at the front, a spare room, mens retiring room, lavatories, and ladies retiring room and telegraph learners room, and facing Osborne street, a linesmen's room, engineers' store etc.

Over the annexe are a postmens retiring room, clerks retiring room, and bag store. The third storey does not reach so far back it is principally taken up by the telegraphs for the postal and telegraph work are to be combined in the central office this will have a very large hall fitted with the latest instruments and telegraph apparatus and adjoining is a telephone partly lighted by a sky light.

The fourth storey which only extends a little way over the instrument room is to be occupied as a battery room and stores.

The approximate cost of land is £30,000, and it is hoped it may be completed during the year. Already the wires are being laid underground to the site and also pneumatic tubes to carry the telegrams to the docks and the eastern end of the town. We understand that the Victoria St office will not be done away with, but that it will continue as a branch office.

PAST HISTORY

The first memories of a Post Office in Grimsby are of a shop where Easons railway booking office now stands. ??? Those remote days the late Mr Skelton was the postmaster, and with but a few thousand population the work ???? not be of a very onerous character. Later , the late Mr Albert Gait became the postmaster, the post ??? in Bull Ring lane, and it was soon afterwards that the town began to stride forward in ???? league books. Since that day the postal authorities have been in a chronic state of trying to catch the town up, and only now do they appear to have approached in sight.

When Mr. Gait resigned the postmastership a move was made in 1878 to the present premises in West St.Mary's gate, and under the successive postmasters Messrs. P. R. W. chandler, A. S. Roberts, and H. J. J. Melsom, all of whom have worked assiduously for the town during their residence, frequent alterations and extensions have been made. We distinctly remember Mr. Roberts describing the premises at St. Mary's gate and Victoria street, after their many alterations to be a series of rabbit warrens, full of strange turns and blind alleys, so that their safe navigation almost necessitated a compass and chart. The office at St. Mary's gate was then a one-storey building. It was considerably enlarged in 1891, again in 1896, and 1898, and there have been frequent minor alterations.

When taken over by the State telegraph business was carried on in one of the late Mr. S. Ellis's buildings near the bottom of Victoria Street, the postal work being transacted at the shop of Mr. Croft, chemist, who was then a subpostmaster, but on the latter shop being burnt down, the postal and telegraph work was amalgamated and shortly after removed to the present premises at the corner of Victoria street and Cleethorpe road. Here shop after shop has been taken in, and holes knocked through the walls to afford ingress and egress from one place to another. Every praise is due to the successive postmasters in endeavouring to secure extensions in order to cope with business and Mr Melsom is to be congratulated on the fact that his exertions have resulted in bringing to a state of fruition the scheme for securing of a new post office, such a one as the postal and telegraph business of Grimsby in it's pastness deserves.

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