POST OFFICE BUILDINGS.
There is record of a Post Office having been established in Bristol by the Convention Parliament in 1670, but the site is unknown, and probably the postmaster had post horses—not letters—to attend to. In the year 1700 Mr. Henry Pine, the postmaster of the day, was one of the parties to an agreement for leasing a piece of land "with liberty to build upon the same for the conveniency of a Post Office." The wording of the said agreement shows that the old-fashioned form of building was not in every instance (as it now seems to us to have been) so grotesquely shaped from fancy, or, perhaps, from a desire to economise ground space, for it is therein expressly stated that the building to be used for a Post Office was to have the second storey extended to a truss of eighteen inches over the lane, for the purpose of enabling people to stand in the dry; for there was
no indoor accommodation for the public provided in those days. "Let the imaginative reader," wrote an imaginative writer years ago, "picture to himself our great-great-grandfathers in doublet and ruff, standing in a row under the eighteen-inch truss, while the worthy postmaster, Pine himself, with perhaps one assistant, was sorting the contents of the mail bag. Doubtless," wrote he, "they grumbled when it rained that the said truss was not half a dozen inches wider, and many a person as he became saturated in his time of waiting for his letters growled out his intention of doing something very desperate to the powers that were."
In the "Bargain" books of the Corporation is the following memorandum relating to the foregoing:—
"22nd June, 1700. Then agreed by the Surveyors of the city lands with Henry Pine, deputy postmaster, that he, the said Henry Pine, shall have, hold, and enjoy the ground whereon now stands a shedd having therein four severall shopp seituate in All Saints' Lane, and as much more ground at the lower end of the same shedd as that the whole ground shall contain in length twenty-seven foot,
and to contain in breadth from the outside to the churchyard wall five foot and a half outward into the lane, with liberty to build upon the same for conveniency of a Post Office (namely) The first storey to go forth into the said lane to the extent of that ground and no farther, and the second storey to have a truss of eighteen inches over the lane or more as the said Surveyors shall think fitt that persons coming to the Post Office may have shelter from the rain and stand in the dry. To hold the same from Michaelmas next for fifty years absolute in the yearly rent of 30s. clear of taxes...."
This agreement must have been afterwards modified. For some reason or other, Pine paid no rent until Michaelmas, 1705, when a sum of 25s. was received by the Chamberlain, and "The post house produced the same yearly sum until 1742 when the rent was raised to £3."
The site of the little Post Office alluded to was required in 1742 in connection with the building of the Exchange, and the Post Office was transferred to a house in Small Street, in later days occupied as the printing office of the Times and Mirror newspaper.
There seems to have been some informal understanding that when the Exchange was finished a suitable site would be provided by the Corporation for postal business, and in August, 1746, a Committee reported to the Council that they had contracted for the erection of "a house intended to be made use of as a Post Office, certain workmen having agreed to build and find all the materials at the rate of £60 per square (sic); while Mr. Thomas Pine (nephew to Henry, the former postmaster) had offered to become the tenant at £40 a year, which he alleged is the highest rent he is able at present to pay." The Council approved of the proposal, recommending the Committee to get as much rent as was practicable. The house, which was of scanty dimensions, cost £700 exclusive of a ground rent of £15 a year given for the site. Only the ground floor was set apart for postal business, Mr. Pine residing on the premises. The first year's rent (£43) was paid in 1750. Between 1750 and 1815 the building must have been considerably enlarged, for in the latter year the Post Office is spoken of as a handsome and convenient building of freestone, near to the western end of the Exchange, to which it has a wing