| Status: | Active, open to new members |
| Organiser: |
Penny da Silva
|
| Group email: | London Studies 3 group |
| When: | Monthly on Wednesday all day The third Wednesday of the month; occasionally another day that week. |
We take it in turns to organise a monthly trip to London to visit a site of interest, especially places that are less well known. We usually work in pairs and sometimes do a recce trip ahead of time. We travel up by train during the off-peak period and have lunch in a nearby pub or restaurant.
The inaugural trip of the new London Studies group 3 was to the Postal Museum in Clerkenwell. We travelled to Farringdon Station independently but the whole group of 6 met up at the museum, which we hadn’t realised is at the infamous Mount Pleasant sorting office.
Thrillingly, the first activity was a 15-minute ride on a loop of the narrow-gauge underground Mail Rail, which was used between 1927 and 2003 to transport millions of items of mail between sorting offices in London. Mount Pleasant was roughly in the middle as it stretched from Whitechapel in the east to Paddington in the west.
We saw some old stations and mail trains, and there were audiovisual displays showing how chaotic and busy the railway used to be. Every station had a cat to catch mice. The actual Postal Museum is across the road from the railway. It explains the history of the postal service and telephones, and has an impressive collection of both green and red mail boxes. We were amused by a 1936 GPO film “The Fairy of the Phone”, which explained how to answer the telephone: never just say "Hello"; give the phone number and your name. That's exactly how I was taught to answer the phone as a child. It seems strange that, not long ago, both the postal service and landlines were central to all our lives, but have now been replaced almost entirely by new technology.
Lunch was tasty and excellent value at a traditional pub, The Anchor, and we then made our way back to the train by bus or on foot. If you like exploring new places in London why not join the group?
Forthcoming visits include Highgate Cemetery in July and the Horniman Museum and Gardens in August. Our wonderful capital city boasts a wealth of amazing historic sights, including many that are not so well known. If you’d like to be part of this new group, email via the link above.
We are a new group and would welcome more members.
Last updated 2 June 2026