A very entertaining Evening with Wigan

The society was delighted to welcome Peter Rooke for his talk entitled ‘An Evening With Wigan’, which turned out to be a delightful overview of the postal history of Wigan.

Starting with the founding of the town, Peter went on to describe the development of the mail services to and through the town, with specific reference to the routes used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We were shown mail from as early as 1768, illustrating first the manuscript cancels and then the later development of the handstamps which covered both town and instructional markings.

Mail from the Victorian era right up to recent QEII mail was shown along with a selection of parcel tags that would be extraordinarily hard to assemble in current times. Peter also displayed a range of material with postmarks from each of the post offices that make up the Wigan region.

The vote of thanks for the talk was given by Brian Lythgoe.