The registered envelope below was sent to Glastonbury in 1882. The contents were a promissary note for £200 and a letter giving the lender a lien on Title Deeds as security.
£200 in 1882 is about £24,600 today, based on the Bank of England's inflation calculator.
The entire below from Axbridge to Crediton in December 1816 bears earlier examples of the "AXBRIDGE" handstamp, SO 20 (previously known from 1818) and the "WELLS.S / Penny Post" handstamp, SO 935 (previously known from 1817). The Axbridge handstamp is not crisp and clear like I would expect an early example to look, but it is definitely an example of SO 20 rather than the earlier and shorter SO 15 "AXBRIDGE (I scanned and overlaid examples of both handstamps to check which matched).
The contents appear to be from a land agent to the owner and include a list of disbursements claimed by one of the tenants.
Here are a couple of items associated with Sir Isaac Pitman, the first an uprated postal stationery card sent to Bermuda in December 1889, with a printed message on the reverse in phonetic english.
The second item is an envelope from December 1926, by which time Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons were publishers rather than a Phonetic Institute.
Bath had nineteen different 3-bar Circular Duplex (3CD) numeral cancels. The example below is of the eleventh, distinguishable by the date and the width of the "B" in "BATH".
The part-entire below is interesting from a couple of perspectives. Firstly it has a "BATH" straight line handstamp that was previously known used in 1795-1796. Based on the postal charge of 1/4d this letter must be from after the new postal rates came in on 6th January 1797, extending the usage of the handstamp to 1795-1797. Prior to the new rates the postal charge for over 150 miles was 6d; from 6th January 1797 it was 8d for over 150 miles. The charge of 1/4d would be for a double letter.
The second interesting thing is the contents, being a serious concern about the writer's daughter and the company she is keeping.
One suspects that this might have been a deliberate use of a Green Shield Stamp on an envelope from Weston-super-Mare to Burnham-on-Sea in December 1976 ! I assume it just got missed in the Christmas rush and hence did not get charged postage due. Second class rate at the time was 6½p.
The unfranked postcard below sent from Burnham-on-Sea to near Minehead has a "BATH STATION OFFICE / 5" double circle double-arc (Dulwich, so called because that was where the first one was issued to) handstamp dated 7th August 1929.
In the first half othe the 18th century there are a number of gaps in the timeline where no Bath handstamp are currently known. A 26x8 mm handstamp was known from 1738 and 1739, a 26x12 mm handstamp is recorded in the British County Catalogue from 1742, and a 28x7 mm handstamp is known from 1750-1757.
The entire below is dated 20th January 1745 inside with a somewhat degraded handstamp that matches the 26x8 mm handstamp from 1738-1739 (checked by overlaying scans of the handstamps).
I have not seen an example of the 26x12 mm handstamp from 1742 that is recorded in the BCC.
