14 shillings a week to deliver the local mail...
THE Old Great North Road - running from London to York - was the major route for the beginning of the postal service.
Staging posts were set along the route for official mail. But in 1635, King Charles I opened them up to the public.
Mail was collected by recipients - usually landowners and other important people - from the staging posts.
The system expanded slowly and by 1814, mail from London to Sheffield travelled from Worksop on the Great North Road via Aston.
The first receiving house for mail in Aston was opened in 1848 at the Blue Bell Inn on Worksop Road with John Seymour as licensee and shopkeeper.
A receiving house received mail and informed senders of letters the appropriate postal charges.
They did not deliver mail. Letters arrived from Sheffield at 7.30am and were despatched from Aston to Sheffield at 5.00pm.
And the first post office building was opened on the 18th December 1854 in what is now a dwelling, 1A Bell Street, at the corner of Bell Street and Worksop Road.
A gardener, Thomas Plant, took on the job of postmaster with an annual income of 11, serving a community of about 900.
In 1861, Thomas was still running the post office, but letters were now delivered from Rotherham, with Richard Holdsworth the Rural Messenger, earning 14 shillings weekly.
In 1872, John White was running the post office which was also a money order office and a savings bank and by 1879 also a telegraph office.
By 1881, John's daughter Eliza, 23, was his assistant and in the 1891 census John, now aged 72, was still the postmaster.
In 1910, Mrs. May Duckenfield took over the running of the office. She had the post office for 46 years and in the latter part it was run by her daughter Rene.
In the 1960s the post office had its first change of address since it opened in 1854, when it moved further up the village to 31 Worksop Road with Mrs Johnson as postmistress.
This move caused some controversy at the time, as Aston Parish Council thought that it was in a dangerous position because of the narrow A57 road running alongside.
The problem must have been solved because the office stayed there until its final move in 1978 to its present position in what we in Aston call Post Office Yard.
by Ann Key, Aston-cum-Aughton History Group
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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