page_title: History of the British Army postal service
section_title: Home Postal Depot (1914-20)
hierarchical_section_title: History of the British Army postal service / Royal Engineers (Postal Section) – First World War (1914-18) / Home Postal Depot (1914-20)
caption_attribution_description: English: Graph of the weekly processing of mail bags and registered letter through the Home Postal Depot RE 1914-19
context_page_description: The postal service of the British Army is today provided by the British Forces Post Office but its origins may be traced back to Saxon times.
context_section_description: The Home Postal Depot (HPD) was formed on 10 August 1914, but on a very ad-hoc basis, under the administration of the GPO.  A letter sorting office (Army Letter Office 1 – ALO1) and a parcel office were established in the GPO King Edward Building, London. It soon became apparent that the facilities were inadequate to cope with the volumes of mail being sent to the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France.
  Early 1915 the HPD was re-organised and came under the direct management of the RE (PS).  Maj CA Wheeler RE was appointed the Officer Commanding in February.  A second ALO (ALO 2) was opened in GPO Mount Pleasant and the parcel office was also moved there. As the BEF grew larger and new fronts were opened in the Middle East so the volume of mail grew.
  Late in 1916 the HPD moved to a purpose built wooden building (200,000 sq ft) on Chester Road, Regent's Park. This new facility contained the HPD administration offices, a large parcel office and ALO2 both of which moved from GPO Mount Pleasant.   ALO2 was responsible for the processing of mails to all theatres except BEF. ALO 1 (handling the BEF mails) remained in GPO King Edward Building for the duration of the war.
  A Dominions Army Letter Office (DALO), tasked with handling Australian and New Zealand troops mail, opened in the space vacated by the ALO2 on its move to Regent's Park.  The DALO closed in March 1919.
  HM King George V and HM Queen Mary visited HPD at Regent's Park on 11 December 1916 and on 1 August 1918 they visited ALO 1 in the King Edward Building.
  The staff work that brought about the re-organisation of the HPD and its move to Regent's Park was largely executed by a Principal Clerk in the GPO Secretariat, Fredric Williamson.  He was commissioned into the RE (PS) as Lt Col in May 1915 and appointed Director Army Postal Services (Home). In May 1915 he took over responsibility for the mail services to the theatres outside the BEF.
  Volumes of letter mails continued to grow (see Fig 1) so in 1917 it was deemed appropriate to outsource some of the work to provincial offices (Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield).  These offices sent despatches direct to the BAPOs.  In the same year the German U-boat campaign against the British merchant marine was successfully limiting supply of goods and materials to the UK and this was reflected in the decline in the number of parcels being sent to troops overseas (see Fig 2), which reached a peak of over 1 million in April 1917 but dropped to 400,000 by April 1918 (rationing was introduced in January 1918).
  The transport requirements of the Depot were met at first by the London Postal Service through the existing Civil Post Office contract but owing to labour shortages in the autumn of 1915 the contractor could no longer carry on. The War Office then agreed to attach the 620th Company Army Service Corps (M.T.) to the Depot for the duration.  Such was the demand that at one time the company had an establishment of 500 men and 220 three-ton lorries.
caption: Fig 1 - A graph showing weekly processing of mail bags and registered letters through the Home Postal Depot RE 1914-19
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