I set myself the challenge of buying half in London's first post office and half in London's last post office... in alphabetical order, that is.
For this alphabetical challenge I needed a list of London's post offices, which is awkward because the Post Office's branch finder doesn't do lists, only "closest to"s. Thankfully this is a problem other people also have, and volunteers at OpenStreetMap put in regular FoI requests to extract full details. They last did this in September so a fairly up-to-date list of UK post offices exists - about 10250 in total. From this spreadsheet it's not difficult to find Britain's first and last.
The UK's first and last post office First:"Abberley", Stockton Road, Abberley, Worcester WR6 6AR Last:"Zeals", Chapel Lane, Zeals, Warminster, Wiltshire BA12 6NL
London's first and last take a little longer to extract because you can't filter by region, only by postal county, so you also have to take Essex, Surrey, Kent and Middlesex into consideration. But I think I've shuffled things and can therefore confirm that London contains approximately 700 post offices (i.e. about 20 per borough). The geographical extremities are as follows.
London's most north-, south-, west- and easterly post offices North: "Enfield Wash", 578 Hertford Road, Enfield, Middlesex EN3 5SU South: "Old Coulsdon", 3 The Parade, Coulsdon, Surrey CR5 West: "Heathrow Airport Terminal 5", London Heathrow Airport, TW6 2GA East: "Cranham", 77-81 Front Lane, Cranham, Upminster, Essex RM14 1XL
But I'm after A-Z. For the start of the alphabet I narrowly avoided going to Acton Banking Hub, Addiscombe Exchange and Aldwych, which would have been very different transactional experiences. Instead I ended up in south London, literally a stone's throw from a big station.
London's first post office: Abbey Wood 3 Tilston Bright Square, Felixstowe Road, Abbey Wood SE2 9DR
Abbey Wood's post office is not what it was. If I'd made this alphabetical quest five years ago I'd have found a significant presence on the main shopping street, a Crown post office inside a large 1960s building designed to double up as a sorting office. But this closedin 2019 because the landlord wanted to sell up and build 30 flats instead, so for three years the people of Abbey Wood had to do without. A new home waseventually found on the ground floor of a garish gold-balconied block of flats beside the big Sainsbury's, but this time as a local branch. It's quite a fall from grace.
Tilston Bright Square is a charmless ground level piazza in the shadow of the Manorway and straddles the Greenwich/Bexley boundary. It's named after Sir Charles Tilston Bright, the engineer who oversaw the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858. He was later elected as MP for Greenwich MP, but his specific local claim to fame is that he was visiting his brother's house in Abbey Wood when he suddenly dropped dead from a heart attack. Visiting his eponymous square is unlikely to raise the spirits.
The new post office can be found inside Bethel Cash and Carry, a lowly convenience store used by those who don't fancy traipsing round the adjacent megastore. Its exterior is swathed in vinyls depicting fruit, cereal, halal meat and the possibility of making an international money transfer, plus an underwhelming splash of Post Office branding. Its door is supposed to open automatically but the button's not obvious and I had to come to the aid of a basket-lugging lady struggling to pull the handles.
The Post Office counter has been positioned beyond the main till, past the aisles of packaged stuff and nudged up in one corner. It's a fairly small domain, hemmed in by stacks of sliced bread and corralled behind a display of lipsticks, wax strips and boxed fragrances. While you wait you can grab a tub of ice cream, pick up a bottle of Supermalt Original or peruse the full range of One4all Gift Cards - a tie-in Post office promotion. I found myself joining a straggly ill-defined queue of four, somewhere between the plantain chips and the hot meat patties.
My wait lasted ten minutes, mainly because the lady at the front of the queue kept producing additional packages to send. I know one contained truffles because she had to confirm the contents before despatch, and only when she was out of the way did proceedings progress more rapidly. The server was charming, taking on board my request for a non-standard number of stamps and attempting to tear them from a larger sheet. She'd have been a lot quicker in the good old days when they were properly perforated but these new barcoded sticky devils are much harder to fold and tease apart. Challenge half complete.
For the end of the alphabet I narrowly avoided going to Yeading, Yiewsley and York Road in Battersea. Instead I ended up heading back into central London, which thankfully is much quicker than it used to be.
London's last post office: York Way 134-136 York Way, Islington N1 0AX
York Way is the main road which runs up the side of King's Cross station. To buy stamps keep going past the Guardian's offices and across the Regent's Canal, which is approximately where millennial development fades and standard residential streets kick in. The post office sits in the middle of a short parade between a cafe and a coin-op laundrette, with Contemporary Turkish and Chinese BBQ dining options available close by. But it's not at all obvious that the unit in question houses a Post Office because the wording on the awning hasn't been changed since the counter moved in and the sole red sign pokes out perpendicular to the street.
This is Express Food Store, a generic minimart and also off-licence, as advertised by three sploshing wine glasses pictured prominently in the window. I'm not sure precisely when the shop became a Post Office but I know it's after 2011 because Google Streeview has an unexpectedly detailed interior snapshot. The owners sacrificed a short scrap of counter where the Fruitellas, Freddos and Hula Hoops used to be, creating a tiny subdomain where the subpostmaster now holds sway. You could argue it's a super-efficient use of very limited space, or you could argue a public service has been demoted to the ranks of commercial insignificance.
Queuing is an issue because the store has micro-aisles, one of which loops around the rear of the shop. To reach the back of the line I chose to walk the full length of the wine section, dodged past a lady perusing envelopes, U-turned by the chiller cabinet and reversed past the eggs. Here I settled between the rye bread and the fig rolls, again finding myself fifth in the queue, and waited for the slowcoach at the front to complete their package-despatching transaction. Others preferred the quick route, squeezing past me direct, in one case despondent to discover that this was indeed the queue for the Post Office rather for than the ordinary shop.
The slowest punter had brought a rucksack from which he produced a brown cardboard envelope hand-decorated with a large silver urn. He went through the rigmarole of weighing it to determine the right postage and then produced a second envelope and then a third. It turned out he had ten envelopes, all individually addressed, and the labelling process only sped up when the member of counter staff became convinced they were all going to weigh 311g. Thankfully the customer directly ahead of me only wanted to deposit £60 so he was quick, and then I finally stepped up from the rack of pains au chocolat to the counter in front of the Bacardi.
Again the employee serving me was courteous and capable, and again they dug into their wodge of paperwork to find the appropriate wallet of second class stamps. If I'd asked for five it would have been easy because he already had a part-sheet of those, but tearing the sixth prolonged the transaction beyond its traditional duration. I tucked my purchases into a last posting dates leaflet and walked out past the standard retail counter, which had been far less busy during my ten minute stay. Practically-speaking Express Food Store is Post Office first and supermarket second, but these days the drive for efficiency means any old corner will do.
