Bath Sorting Office
Manvers Street
Photograph © Stephen Richards via Geograph and licensed for re-use under a Creative Commons Licence
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Architect
Edward Rivers Year 1894 Listed building status Grade II Archive sources National Archives WORK 69/6 (photograph) Selected bibliographical references Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette 12 Jul 1894, p. 8 History Closed: c.1936 Current use: Bookshop and bindery ("George Bayntun") |
Building description
From: Bath Chronicle 12 July 1894, p. 8
By the 17th inst. the contractor's men will have given up possession of the new sorting offices which have been built for the local postal authorities in Manvers-street. The fixtures will then have to be placed in position, and it is thought that about six weeks or two months will elapse before the new building will be tenanted by the sorters. The arrangement of the offices is very simple but ample room has been provided for the performance of duties which have to be executed at high pressure speed and which often are exceptionally heavy. There is a broad front entrance from Manvers-street but the most important means of approach will be at the rear which is reached from Railway-place. As yet re-arrangements necessitated by the new departure are hardly complete but it is certain that all the sorting now done at the central establishment in York-buildings will be transferred to Manvers-street. The whole of the parcel baskets and mail bags coming into the city will be conveyed from the Great Western Railway Station, close at hand, on trucks and on reaching the sorting office will be emptied from the trucks into a shoot running down to the basement. Here the parcels post crates will be opened and the contents sorted in a room 40ft. by 73ft. This apartment, which has an asphalte floor, might with advantage be loftier. The bags containing the letters immediately on being received are sent to the room on the ground floor by means of a lift placed just at the bottom the shoot. The letter sorting room is the feature of the building. It is a handsome apartment 40ft. by 79ft., more than half the space being open to the roof, and it runs the entire area of the building. The floors are laid with pitch pine blocks. On the top floor, which does not run far back, there is a large dining-room for those employed in letter sorting, the majority of these hands working from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., and offices for the inspectors who can obtain a view of the portion of the sorting room below from a look-out window specially constructed for this purpose. There is also a spiral staircase outside the main building, from which the proceedings in the rooms on the basement and ground floor can be surveyed. On the basement also there is a dining-room and kitchen for the men engaged on the parcels. Separate staircases in front and at the rear are provided, and from an area on the south side of the building there is a lift for coals, &c. The lavatory accommodation is spacious and on the most approved principles; in fact the employees appear to have been studied every respect. The letters and parcels collected in the upper part of the city at Weston and in the Walcot district will still be brought to the office at York-buildings and thence dispatched to Manvers street for sorting. It also intended that the letter earners shall assemble at York-buildings for the receipt of their respecive deliveries as heretofore the bundles being forwarded from Manvers-street already sorted. Bath is a centre of much postal work and all the forwarding will be undertaken at the new offices, bags for and from mail carts and trams being dealt with there. A total reconstruction of the York-buildings will be carried out but the details are not yet matured. Mr. Rivers of the Office of Public Works, was the architect for the new offices and Mr Elliot of the same Department, superintended their construction by Messrs. J. Long and Sons, of Bath, the contractors who have carried out the work in their usual excellent style. The cost of the building has been about £5,000. At present it is not intended to open an office for the transaction of ordinary post office business the new building but this is developement [sic] which may follow. Probably a letter box will be fixed at the establishment.
From: Bath Chronicle 12 July 1894, p. 8
By the 17th inst. the contractor's men will have given up possession of the new sorting offices which have been built for the local postal authorities in Manvers-street. The fixtures will then have to be placed in position, and it is thought that about six weeks or two months will elapse before the new building will be tenanted by the sorters. The arrangement of the offices is very simple but ample room has been provided for the performance of duties which have to be executed at high pressure speed and which often are exceptionally heavy. There is a broad front entrance from Manvers-street but the most important means of approach will be at the rear which is reached from Railway-place. As yet re-arrangements necessitated by the new departure are hardly complete but it is certain that all the sorting now done at the central establishment in York-buildings will be transferred to Manvers-street. The whole of the parcel baskets and mail bags coming into the city will be conveyed from the Great Western Railway Station, close at hand, on trucks and on reaching the sorting office will be emptied from the trucks into a shoot running down to the basement. Here the parcels post crates will be opened and the contents sorted in a room 40ft. by 73ft. This apartment, which has an asphalte floor, might with advantage be loftier. The bags containing the letters immediately on being received are sent to the room on the ground floor by means of a lift placed just at the bottom the shoot. The letter sorting room is the feature of the building. It is a handsome apartment 40ft. by 79ft., more than half the space being open to the roof, and it runs the entire area of the building. The floors are laid with pitch pine blocks. On the top floor, which does not run far back, there is a large dining-room for those employed in letter sorting, the majority of these hands working from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., and offices for the inspectors who can obtain a view of the portion of the sorting room below from a look-out window specially constructed for this purpose. There is also a spiral staircase outside the main building, from which the proceedings in the rooms on the basement and ground floor can be surveyed. On the basement also there is a dining-room and kitchen for the men engaged on the parcels. Separate staircases in front and at the rear are provided, and from an area on the south side of the building there is a lift for coals, &c. The lavatory accommodation is spacious and on the most approved principles; in fact the employees appear to have been studied every respect. The letters and parcels collected in the upper part of the city at Weston and in the Walcot district will still be brought to the office at York-buildings and thence dispatched to Manvers street for sorting. It also intended that the letter earners shall assemble at York-buildings for the receipt of their respecive deliveries as heretofore the bundles being forwarded from Manvers-street already sorted. Bath is a centre of much postal work and all the forwarding will be undertaken at the new offices, bags for and from mail carts and trams being dealt with there. A total reconstruction of the York-buildings will be carried out but the details are not yet matured. Mr. Rivers of the Office of Public Works, was the architect for the new offices and Mr Elliot of the same Department, superintended their construction by Messrs. J. Long and Sons, of Bath, the contractors who have carried out the work in their usual excellent style. The cost of the building has been about £5,000. At present it is not intended to open an office for the transaction of ordinary post office business the new building but this is developement [sic] which may follow. Probably a letter box will be fixed at the establishment.
