The last surviving rural postal workers who delivered mail by foot are being sought for a forthcoming book celebrating their lives and mapping their often arduous daily journeys.
Delivering mail by foot ended in the countryside in 1970 with the adoption of postal vans, and it is now feared that the postal paths and the history of those who trod them are disappearing from living memory.
The author Alan Cleaver is collating a selection of the best postal paths across the UK, with stories about the posties who made them.
He said: “They created these paths, or used existing paths, as shortcuts between farms. They would have saved themselves a few hours on what was often already a long day. And it just struck me that some of them are really nice walks.”
As well as plotting their routes, Cleaver is keen to acknowledge the crucial role postal workers played in rural communities. “What is coming out is the tremendous rich history of these postman and women as well as their amazing walks in all weathers.
“These were the people who not only brought the post and the news, but they also brought medicine and made sure people were all right. There was more of a sense of connection with the postmen then because they were walking.”
The routes include an 11-mile postal round through south Shropshire hills, by the late Elsie Rowson. Her family recall that she not only delivered the mail but also read aloud to those who had trouble reading.
Her daughter Susan Sproson told the Guardian “She used to make cakes and take them on her round and checked in on everyone. A social service sounds wrong, but it was part of what she did.” Rowson’s duties also involved delivering heavy lead batteries to isolated farms there were off the grid.
Sproson said her mother did not usually drink but would get “tiddly” on Christmas Day, when she still had to deliver the post and was invited in for a drink at many of the isolated farms and cottages she served.
Other postal paths include Kenny MacKay’s route on the craggy coastline of Harris, which is now a popular mountain biking route. And Cleaver is currently documenting the nine-mile route in Bowes, County Durham, of Matt Bendelow, a postal worker who managed the journey on one leg.
He is also trying to plot the round of Hannah Knowles, who began delivering the post in Eskdale Green, Cumbria in 1912, and carried on doing it for the next 62 years. She took only three days off due to illness, Cleaver has discovered.
He has so far plotted a neighbouring round in Boot of the late Ben Vicars, with the help of Patricia Nolan, whose mother ran the local post office. Nolan did the round herself in the summer of 1961 as a 19-year-old teaching student. She recalled: “After three weeks I was on my knees. But walking back after you’d delivered all the letters and looking over the Scafell range, it was just lovely.”
She also remembers passing on news and “gossip from the valley” to farms in the hills. “The postmen and women played an important role because there wasn’t much transport. Having someone come every day and say hello and have a cup of tea was vital. It was contact with the outside world.”
Cleaver, a former local newspaper editor, is hoping to track down surviving rural postmen and women. He said: “I’m putting a plea out there to retired postmen and women, and to anybody who might have known them and their routes, to pass on the details. Postmen’s paths need to be saved, preserved and celebrated.”
