Plaque 1939-45 Post Office

Central Post Office, St. Nicholas Street (Closed)

Royal Mail Processing Centre, Tyneside Mail Centre,, Earlsway, Gateshead. NE11 0YY NZ 24778 60848

1939-45

Unveiled Sunday 1st February 1948 by The Lord Mayor of Newcastle upon Tyne Alderman T. McCutcheon J.P.
Service conducted by the Vicar of Newcastle upon Tyne The Very Reverend N.M. Kennaby.

Brass

The Postal and Telecommunications Staffs of the Newcastle upon Tyne District

This tablet is erected by
The Postal and
Telecommunications Staffs
of the
Newcastle upon Tyne District
in honour and to the memory of
their colleagues, named below
who lost their lives
in the World War
1939-1945.

Plaque, 43 inches high x 23 inches wide (1.9m x 584mm).

There is a wide border of Celtic knot-work standing proud on a black background.

The Royal monogram “GR” appear in all four corners.

At the top are two crossed Union flags with a crown between.

The dedication is in a mixture of sans serif capitals and elaborate lower case lettering.

The names are in three columns, divided by a single vertical line between each, using sans serif capitals.

1. The unknown newspaper cutting 1948 has an accompanying note from Bill Beadling- “The photograph shows Mrs Ritchie and myself. She is directly in front of the Vicar and the back of my head is to her left.” Mr Beadling suggests the newspaper was the Evening Chronicle

2. When first moved to Team Valley, the memorial was in the public lobby, where it was unnoticed. It was moved in 2009 to the lobby through the efforts of Peter O’Donnell (retired postman) and Bill Sadler (Royal Mail engineer). Mr. Sadler and Mr O’Donnell have collected information on the names on the memorial which is in a file to the right of the WW2 memorial.

Photos: R.W. Gould; Dorothy Hall

Unveiling Programme 01/02/1948

Unknown Newspaper February 1948

Royal Mail Courier
December 2009 carries an article on the removal of the memorial to the lobby in Note 1 above.

F. Furness;
Ralph W. Gould;
Ted Dodds;
John Windsor;
Tony Harding;
Bill Sadler;
Peter O’Donnell

Bill Sadler and Peter O’Donnell have shared their research with NEWMP and are allowing us to add it to the website.