TUES 14.42: BATH POSTMARK KILLED OFF BY MISTAKE

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/displayNode ... eId=163047

Royal Mail has apologised after accidentally killing off the historic Bath postmark.

Last month staff at the Bath Postal Museum noticed that the “Bath, Bristol, Taunton” postmark had been replaced by one simply saying Bristol.

The attraction celebrates the pioneering role Bath played in the development of the postal service, with the first stamped letter in the world being sent from the city.

But when The Bath Chronicle asked the Royal Mail why it had been changed, the company said the new postmark was simply down to a new machine being used at its mail sorting centre at Filton.

A Royal Mail spokeswoman said: “When we recently upgraded a machine in Bristol, it reverted back to the old postmark of just Bristol.

“We are grateful to you for pointing this out to us and we will be taking steps to revert it back to Bath, Bristol, Taunton.
“Something is being done today to change the machine and it should be sorted within days.

“We would like to point out that all the mail which has been stamped manually has continued to say Bath, Bristol, Taunton.”
The Bath postmark first became an issue about ten years ago when the city’s outgoing mail began to be sorted in Bristol.
At the time there was a petition, signed by thousands of people, to keep Bath in the postmark and the compromise of the three placenames was reached.

Bath MP Don Foster was heavily involved with that campaign and is relieved that the postmark is coming back.
He said: “This is really good news because a promise was made to me categorically stating that we would continue to have the word Bath in the postmark and I am delighted they are honouring that promise.

“Because we are now mentioned on all the post that goes out from Bristol, not just Bath, we are getting much more publicity for the city, which is fantastic.

“It would have been a huge worry if this mistake had turned out to be a policy decision.”
Bath has a long postal service history, with the city’s former postmaster Ralph Allen improving the efficiency of the system in the early 18th century.

Bath-born John Palmer had introduced the mail coach to speed up delivery times in the 1780s, and Thomas Moore Musgrave posted the world’s first stamped letter in 1840.

One of the founders of the postal museum, Audrey Swindells, said she was very happy at the news.

She said: “When they tried to get rid of the postmark before, we had thousands of signatures on our petition and this shows that people in the city really care about this issue.

“This latest update is excellent news.”

[k979aaa]

Bath postmark has taken a shower and gone down the plug hole like the rest of royalmail!.