Fakenham Post Offices - A brief history |
The Post Office in Fakenham has had at least five locations during its long history! Records show that Elizabeth Markant was the postmistress in Fakenham until the 1830s, succeeded by William Warren in about 1835. Warren died in 1840 and was succeeded by Charles Lulman who moved to the Bull Street post office at the east end of the market Place.
The first record we have of a Crown Post Office in Fakenham was in the fine old grade ll listed building on the corner of Old Post Office Street behind the cinema, currently occupied by Butcher Andrews, solicitors. This replaced an earlier sub post office on the site, a glass and chinaware shop run by Martin Bambridge. After his death in 1895 aged 84, Bambridge was succeeded by Walter Robert Bradfield, By 1903 Thomas Ernest Pengelly is recorded as being postmaster. The Post Office returned to its former Market Place location in 1906, to premises currently occupied by Belton Duffey estate agents, opening for business in January 1907. A yard at the rear of these premises later housed Fakenham’s first telephone exchange. |
In 1933 the Post Office moved again to a purpose-built building on the corner of Holt Road and Queens Road. The building housed a sorting office, telephone exchange and Post Office counter; however this move heralded the end of a Crown Post Office in Fakenham. The Queens Road Post Office counter closed in 1994/95 and simultaneously opened a Post Office counter in Budgens supermarket situated in the newly constructed Millers Walk (now the Argos store). In 2008 the Post Office moved yet again to its current location, within Martin McCall Ltd (formally Forbuoys) in Millers Walk.
© 2011 Fakenham & District Community Archive.
Created in-house by Fakenham & District Community Archive
Created in-house by Fakenham & District Community Archive