Summary
Post Office built in the early 1880s and heightened in 1909 by C Roper who was probably also responsible for the addition of the rear wings around the same period.
Reasons for Designation
The Post Office, built in the early 1880s and heightened in 1909 by C Roper, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* it is a good example of a Victorian/ Edwardian post office in a refined Renaissance style, the classical idiom conveying the tradition and solidity appropriate for a civic building that is entrusted with the nation’s communication;
* the finely worked limestone demonstrates a high quality of craftsmanship in its crisply cut classical ornamentation, softened by the more sinuous form of the carved female heads with pairs of fishes and stylised acanthus leaves.
Historic interest:
* it makes a notable contribution to the commercial townscape in Lowestoft.
Group value:
* it has group value with the adjacent Grade-II listed bank, built in the 1860s in a similar Renaissance style.
History
A postal network had existed in England since the early C16 and by the early C17 it had evolved into a nascent public amenity, eventually confirmed by Acts of 1657 and 1660. The earliest post offices were not buildings in their own right, but mere collection points within shops or other buildings where the postal activity was limited to the posting of letters. The modern postal system was created by the reforms of Sir Rowland Hill who introduced the penny post in 1840 which had major repercussions for the buildings of the Post Office. The use of postal services increased dramatically and in 1858 the official provision of premises was taken over by the Government’s Office of Works. James Williams (1824-1892) of the Office of Works was appointed as architect in charge of post offices. It was probably Williams who established what came to be the standard form of a post office: a main block incorporating a public office on the ground floor with the postmaster’s living quarters above, adjoining to the rear a single-storey top-lit sorting office. Ancillary spaces included clerks’ rooms and public retiring rooms. This basic plan form proved so successful in its ability to accommodate later extensions that it was used largely unchanged through to the 1950s. Williams favoured a severe Roman Renaissance style for the head post offices but the branch post offices were built in a variety of styles. In 1870 the Post Office had taken over the telegraph, and in its wake came other services – the parcel post, which started in 1883, and the gradual acquisition of private telephone companies, which culminated in telephones becoming a Post Office monopoly in 1912. This expanding role had major implications for the design of post office buildings; what had once been a facility for the receipt and despatch of letters became something much more complex.
The site of the current Post Office in Lowestoft is shown on the Town Plan of 1878 by William Oldham Chambers. It shows a large detached residential building, set back from the road with grounds at the rear. This building became the premises of the Post Office when, as reported by the Lowestoft Observer (28 June 1873), ‘the business of the several branches of the Lowestoft Post Office was closed on High Street, Commercial Road and the telegraph rooms near the harbour, and transferred to the chief-office […] a house on the London Road, once in the occupation of Mr. Till.’ In the county directory 1875-1879, the Post Office is described as ‘Post, money order and telegraph office, savings bank & Government annuity and insurance office, London Road – postmaster George Henry Cooper’. A document in the National Archives refers to the ‘enlargement of Lowestoft Post Office’ in 1883 which presumably refers to the single-storey range fronting London Road, shown in a photograph taken around 1886-1887, and possibly also the rear wings. The two-storey, four-bay building under a hipped roof, which is visible behind this range, is the residential building shown on the 1878 Town Plan. It was later demolished to allow for incremental extensions.
On the first and second edition Ordnance Survey (OS) maps of 1890 and 1905, the Post Office is shown with a rear garden containing mature trees and several glasshouses. It was enlarged by the addition of a first floor to the single-storey frontage in 1909, to the designs of C Roper who was probably also responsible for the addition of the rear wings around the same period. By the third edition OS map of 1927 the building had been extended to the rear to provide a large sorting office, a three-storey building, and a covered yard. By the publication of the 1951 OS map, a detached narrow range at right angles had been built at the north-westernmost end of the site, and a glazed extension was later added to link the sorting office to the front range. None of these additions – the sorting office, three-storey building, covered yard, detached range and glazed link – are included in the listing. After the sorting office function was removed in the 1970s, the sorting office and three-storey building remained largely unused, together with the first floor of the front range. The Post Office closed around four years ago.
Details
Post Office built in the early 1880s and heightened in 1909 by C Roper who was probably also responsible for the addition of the rear wings around the same period.
MATERIALS: the front range is faced in ashlared limestone with stone dressings whilst the rear ranges are constructed of gault brick laid in Flemish bond with brick and concrete dressings. The roofs are clad in artificial slate.
PLAN: the Post Office is located in a terrace of commercial buildings facing south-east onto London Road North. It consists of a front range built in the early 1880s and heightened in 1909 with two rear wings probably dating to the same period.
All of the additional rear extensions are excluded from the listing.
EXTERIOR: the three-storey building has a five-bay symmetrical façade in the Renaissance style with a high stone plinth. The roof is hidden behind a parapet of alternating panels and vase-shaped balusters (the latter aligned with the windows) and has a wide modillion eaves cornice. On the ground floor, the bays are divided by paired square pilasters with plain capitals and bases which support a frieze and a moulded, dentilled cornice. On the frieze, VR POST OFFICE VR is carved in incised lettering. Each bay has a tall, square-headed aperture in a moulded architrave. The three central bays are lit by windows (not original, and currently boarded up), whilst the outer bays contain doors with dentilled cornices and large square overlights (not original). The door in the first bay is double-leaf with six moulded panels; whilst that in the fifth bay is boarded over. The mechanisation for a cash point is below the window in the central bay. To the far left an additional narrow bay has a tall three-light window, again not original. The upper floors are lit by tall, square-headed windows with two-over-two pane horned sashes in moulded architraves. Those on the first floor have a reprise and moulded pediments, whilst those on the second floor have eared architraves, a large square keystone and aprons with guttae. The central bay of the upper floors is flanked by pilasters, their capitals embellished by graceful stone carvings in the form of a female head, a pair of fishes and stylised acanthus leaves. The narrow bay to the far left is lit by two narrow windows with two-over-two pane sashes.
The subsidiary rear elevation and wings are of gault brick with a brick cornice and are divided into bays by plain brick pilaster strips. They are mostly lit by pairs of tall windows in wooden frames with horned sashes, each half divided by a horizontal glazing bar. The windows have a mixture of wide concrete lintels and flat, gauged brick arches. The ground floor of the rear elevation has been partially knocked through to allow for a glazed link. The shorter south-west wing contains the staircase and is slightly higher under a flat roof.
INTERIOR: the interior has undergone considerable modifications over the years and retains few historic fixtures and fittings. The ground floor of the front range (the original early 1880s single-storey post office) has a prominent moulded and dentilled wooden cornice which is mostly obscured by a suspended ceiling. The upper floors (added in 1909) have less elaborate moulded cornices as well as transverse chamfered beams with a simple roll moulding. Screens with panelling below and glazing above, divided by wooden glazing bars, run along the rear length of the range creating a corridor with access to partitioned rooms along the front. These screens with double-leaf doors were added later, probably around in the interwar period.
The south-west rear wing contains the stairwell with a dogleg stair rising up to the third floor. It has cast concrete steps, two iron stick balusters per tread, and a round, fluted newel post. The longer north-east wing contains the strong room on the ground floor with a series of safes, the doors of which have all been removed. The second floor is one long open space, formerly heated by several fireplaces with simple, moulded timber surrounds.
