What was life like back then?

The buildings for the old Post Office in Bridge Street, Belper were first built it was not a Post Office. It was built in 1805, we at war with the French Napoleonic Armies. Just 200 years before  51 Belper people had died in the Great Plague. The Post Office didn't have a network of public offices at that time, mail coaches probably called in at the George & Dragon Pub. The first adhesive postal stamp wasn't invented until 1837. It would be 1853 before the first mail post boxes were installed in Britain.

In 1804 cotton workers would have started to use the newly rebuilt North Mill, previously destroyed by fire. The same type of bricks used in the North Mill floors are also present in some of the floors in the Old Post Office.

The A6 Road as is now, between Belper and Matlock was opened as a Toll/Turnpike Road in 1837. Belper was the first place in Britain to get street gas lighting, the gas works was built in 1850. The first telephones in Belper were in 1895. Motor cars started to appear over the next 10 years.


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