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A photo complete with sign sticking out from the wall.   https://picturenottingham.co.uk/image-library/image-details/poster/ntgm013777/posterid/ntgm013777.html

I gave our postman a tip. It was this....   If you want a tip, it's best not to deliver my birthday cards two weeks late!

Re, The Parcel Sorting Office, I took these this morning, progress is relatively slow due the the nature of it's construction,            

1 hour ago, Rob.L said:

Hmm, that’s got me wondering. Was my sister with you? That’s about the time she met her future husband, who just happened to work for the Post Office at the time as an engineer.

Oh yes Rob, of course she would have been there too, we were on the same course!  

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The Britannia Inn relied heavily on patronage of Royal Mail staff.  It was inevitable that it would not survive after most of RM's operations moved out of town (leaving just the City Delivery Office in the building with pale blue cladding).

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15 hours ago, Jill Sparrow said:

In the early 1940s, my mum worked in the offices of Radio Rentals whose premises were above Toby's on Friar Lane. As a junior member of staff, it was her task to take the day's post to a post office sited opposite the castle. I doubt it's a post office nowadays but the building will still be in existence

 

Small world!  My Mam also worked for Radio Rentals on Friar Lane around 1940-1941 (aged 14/15) as a filing/postal clerk!  She recalled the entrance being next to Toby's, above Rotheras Solicitors.  She earned £1 a week.  She recalled Tony Rothera, in his mid-20s, dating a girl in Radio Rentals.  Mam went to night school at the old People's College (College Street) to learn shorthand typing and said another girl from Radio Rentals went there to learn to be a comptometrist.

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Small world indeed. My mum worked there untill she was called up at 18 and a half. Somehow, her boss got the conscription deferred for six months. She returned, part time after the war was over.

 

Mum's dear friend, Noreen Biddulph also worked there as a comptometrist.

 

Many years later, I worked for Rotheras and remember Anthony Rothera, although he had been succeeded by his son, Ian, by then.

 

One of the perks of working above Toby's in those wartime days was being first to get word that they'd had a delivery of nylons . Hard to find during the war years! All the girls ran downstairs and snapped them up!

 

 

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@The Engineer Somewhere, I have two photos taken at the Radio Rentals office dinner (probably Christmas) in 1943. My mum and her friends are on it. Your mum may be, also. Would she still have been there then? My mum would have been 17 at the time. It wasn't until October 1944 that she finally had to leave to comply with war service requirements.

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@Jill Sparrow Mam said she was only there for a year.  By age 15 (late 1941) she had left Radio Rentals and went to work for Avro (who had commandeered the Bainswear factory to make aircraft parts).

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  • 3 months later...

The former Parcel Sorting Office between Bath St and Brook St (mentioned earlier in this thread) is now undergoing demolition.  They started a couple of weeks ago.  I'd say about 15-20% is done so far.  Stood watching them this morning: there is something fascinating about destruction!

 

As built (late 1960s) it was called PSO (Parcel Sorting Office) and was fitted out with various automated conveyors and bespoke sorting machines.  During rationalisation in later years, some other PSOs around the country closed.  Nottingham was retained and became a PCO (Parcel Concentration Office).  Later still, Parcelforce moved to smaller premises and the building was used for a while by Hertz car rental and as a storage facility.  It was renamed as the Bendigo building.  More info here:

 

https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/royal-mail-sorting-offices-aka-the-bendigo-building-nottingham-january-2022.132996/

 

Let's hope all traces of blue asbestos were removed before they started, though they are damping down as they go.

 

 

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I noticed that had started last week when I went by the area. I also find those interior photos fascinating; there's a whole section of the internet devoted to people who get their kicks out of getting into abandoned/derelict buildings. I might've done it myself if I'd been a bit younger.

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  • 2 weeks later...

We received a hospital letter today, posted 1st class on 21st December.  Also in our post box were several Christmas cards that had been posted in plenty of time before Christmas and took over 2 weeks to be delivered.  On 6th December I sent a ‘special’ card to our granddaughter and put a tenner in it.  She’s never received it.   (She got a lot more than that when she came up for Christmas!).  I understand why postal workers have been on strike and of course they wanted to make the greatest impact by doing it on the run-up to Christmas but I only bought half a dozen stamps this year instead of my normal 80.  It saved me spending many hours writing the cards and also a lot of stamp money and I suspect millions of pounds have been lost by the once great British Royal Mail.  

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We have stopped sending Christmas cards and we make a donation to Air Ambulance instead. Those who we didn't see before Christmas, to tell them, we phoned instead. As for loosing a card in the post my wife sent a birthday card to granddaughter , cash in it , it never arrived and she was distraught. This we believe happens often so we never put money in cards now.

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The same happens over here. No end of friends, over the years, have sent cash or a gift card to grandkids, inside a card, and they never get it. Sometimes the card comes, opened. As my mother would say, thieving gits.

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We stopped sending money in cards a couple of years ago because three cards containing money never arrived.   

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We've not sent any cards this year, apart from our neighbours which could be delivered by hand. Instead We've sent ecards, via email or Jaquie Lawson cards. The primary reason being the cost of postage, which seems to be going through the roof. Also been able to post an open card on here, which members of NS could read. The idea being, if you know me, then it's  a card for you. If you don't know me, then don't read it.

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Well a smidgen of faith has been restored with the Royal Mail ……. my granddaughter has finally received her Christmas card, intact and still with a £10 note tucked inside!  Only taken 25 days to get from Nottingham to Milton Keynes, first class.  

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55 minutes ago, LizzieM said:

Well a smidgen of faith has been restored with the Royal Mail ……. my granddaughter has finally received her Christmas card, intact and still with a £10 note tucked inside!  Only taken 25 days to get from Nottingham to Milton Keynes, first class.  

That's why letters via the post office are called "Snail Mail"

 

Rog

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  • 1 month later...

Demolition started late last year.  I thought they had paused for a Christmas/New Year break but I see now (from those photos and also as I pass there weekly) that they have removed all the rubble from the part that has gone, together with all the demolition equipment.  Hard to tell what's occurring.  They put full-height scaffolding up on part of the front (Brook Street, where reception was) and part of the rear (Bath Street, Official Mail Vehicles entrance) before demolition started.  I've not figured out reason for that.

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