Bristol Postal History, Bristol "B" with date

Collecting Somerset postal history, I naturally came into contact with the postmarks of the Offices under Bristol that are in North Somerset (keeping to the old definition of "Somerset").  Things got a bit out of hand and I now collect Bristol Postal History as well as Somerset.  To stretch it a bit further, this includes Offices under Bristol that are in Gloucestershire (whether Bristol itself is in Gloucestershire is a discussion point).

Future posts may well be Bristol related as well as Somerset.  I'll have to alter the name of the Blog !

For information on the postal history and postmarks of Bristol I'm using "The Postal History of Bristol" in 4 volumes, published by the Bristol Postal History Group (information on purchasing this is on their website).

The first postmarks known from Bristol are "B"s with the date in the loops.  Each datestamp is  unique because they were individually carved from boxwood.  Of the 365/6 dates, just over 50 different dates are known, of which 30 are in Archives.

The datestamps are known used from 1697 to 1720/21 and were introduced to be used on the Cross Posts through Bristol, in a similar fashion to the use of the Bishop mark in London.

The two examples below are 22 April used in 1700 and 21 November used in 1719.