Last Post

In 2006 the BPMA received a £48,100 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). This was for the educational and outreach project Last Post: Remembering the First World War.

This project, a partnership between the BPMA and the City of Westminster Archives (COWAC) proposed to make original archive material accessible to children at Key Stages 1-4.  This was done by developing high quality teaching resources on the following themes:

• Remembrance
  

• Citizenship
  

• The First World War

The summer outreach programme took place in June 2007. Julie Creer was the Education Officer and Lucy Shepherd was the project assistant. Alison Horne was an outreach volunteer from COWAC.

The Primary education resource pack and the Secondary education resource pack provide opportunities for children to link their everyday experiences with people in the past.

The activities in the education packs and additional resources are organised into objective-led themes.  They focus on developing children’s speaking, listening, discussion and empathy skills.

For the outreach sessions, Julie and Alison went into schools and community groups, with objects from the handling collection and activities from the education packs and archives to bring the material alive.

To find out more about this exciting project, read the full Last Post Project Report (PDF, 1.8MB)

Background to the project

In this age of almost instant communication, has the emotion behind the sending and receiving of mail been affected or forgotten? 

Have your feelings of anticipation when waiting for that handwritten letter from a relative or friend disappeared? Does the excitement of opening birthday cards or the surprise as you open that first valentine card still exist?

If a message was sent by text or email, would our emotions be the same?  Would we have the same opportunity to save and treasure these messages for future generations to enjoy?

The First World War was a time when the sending and receiving of letters would have been paramount in the process of bridging the gap between home life and the horrors of war.

The Post Office played a fundamental part in this process. The archive repository at the BPMA is home to over 3,000 files of original paperwork that relate to the running of the Post Office for the period 1914-1918.

The Army Postal Service (APS) kept soldiers in touch with loved ones at home.  Historical reports explain how the censorship of correspondence was enforced.  In 1917, mailbags travelling across the channel to the armies in France totalled over 19,000 per day.  It is estimated that between March 1916 and August 1917, 8.5 million bags of mail were handled in France, a daily average of 15,420.