Looking back with Ian Scott on delivering the mail across Falkirk district over the years

My first reaction back then was to agree until I thought about it. I can post a letter round the corner from my house in the early morning and the following day a postman will deliver it to a house several hundred miles away in London, or Aberdeen or wherever all for couple of pounds. Try getting a cup of coffee in Falkirk High Street for the same price.

It is all a long way from the early days of the posts when ‘runners’ carried letters on foot from the major cities and the vast majority of the population would neither send nor receive a letter in their lives.

In the 17th century, wealthy individuals and businessmen were served by these runners who would leave Edinburgh for Glasgow stopping overnight in Falkirk and taking two days to cover the 48 miles of rough and dangerous roads. If they made it safely to the town the local post would be left with an agent who would be a local lawyer or bank manager. It was then up to the addressee to come and collect his mail. More than a few times the runner would be attacked and robbed and sometimes the runner ‘did a runner’ himself especially if there was cash in the bag.

One account in 1737 talks about “James Johnston , the post betwixt Glasgow and Falkirk who was robbed and wounded by which wound he died.”

Falkirk’s first official ‘post office’ opened in 1689 probably in Bank Street and by the mid 1700s it was on the south side of the High Street opposite the steeple.

Thereafter it moved to Baxter’s Wynd, entered from what was called ‘Post Office Close’, and later to King’s Court where the postmaster was none other than Henry Salmon, the former Provost whose fall from grace I described a few years ago.

By the middle of the 19th century it was in Newmarket Street and things had improved with regular stage coaches and horse posts from Edinburgh to both Glasgow and Stirling.

Once the mail reached Falkirk it was still carried by runners to a number of ‘Receiving Houses’ in Camelon, Carron, Grahamston, Larbert, Laurieston and Polmont.

Companies picked up and dropped their mail once a day except for the mighty Carron Company which collected and delivered four times a day. Later on the runners began to call in at mansion houses and big companies on their way from Head Office and the modern system began to emerge.

The arrival of the railways and later motor cycles and vans helped the service cope with a massive increase in business and by the end of the 19th century the authorities in Falkirk decided that they needed a grand new Head Post Office. The result was the fantastic building in Vicar Street which opened on 30th October 1893. With its amazing concoction of styles and features, as well as the menagerie of lions and unicorns on the roof, it remains one of the town’s landmark buildings. It served until the rather more mundane 1960s style building in Garrison Place opened in 1971. That one is still there but the head Post Office is now in a shop in the Howgate. Shame really.