Shepton Mallet post office staff, 1905

Here's a bit of material that I've just acquired - in October I attended the Somerset & Dorset Postal History Group Autumn meeting in Chard and acquired this large photograph.

The photograph is about 28x20 cm and is not annotated apart from the printer, who was J. Bell & Sons, Shepton Mallet.  The inference is that these were the Royal Mail staff in Shepton Mallet.

By a significant coincidence a few days later I acquired the postcard below.

 The postcard has the same picture and is helpfully labelled on the back "P O officals Shepton Mallet 1905".  It was posted in Pilton on 17th November 1905 (the cancel is known used from 1895 to 1913).

Running out of material

Sadly I'm afraid I will not be posting as regularly in the future.  This blog started in January 2012 so has been running for a while now.  There are over 1400 posts, two a week, mostly on philatelic matters - though I have been diverted recently by matters associated with stagecoaches and turnpike roads.  I'm not sure if these officially count as 'philatelic' even though stagecoaches carried parcels as well as people before the Post Office parcel service started in August 1883, and turnpike roads were the enabler to John Palmer's post office mail coach innovations in 1784.

Future posts will be more sporadic, occurring as I find material.  There may be bursts of activity as I (re-)discover material in my attic that I have not yet posted about !