Alderney Postal History.

Early letters to and from Alderney were carried privately as and when ships  or boats called at the Island until a Post Office was formally opened by the GPO on Alderney under  Guernsey by the 16th March 1848 following considerable debate and appeals to the Postmaster General in London.  Not in 1843 as previously thought by some authors!

John Tilbury was appointed as the Receiver and an undated double arc handstamp was issued for use. This was quickly followed by a numeral obliterator with the Post Office number 965 and then the first datestamp in 1851 and a double arc datestamps with ALDERNEY around the top and code letters  A and C  later in the 1850s.

Throughout the 19th century various sub-types of these handstamps were issued for several purposes such as the introduction of Money Orders, Postal Orders, the appointment of Alderney as a Telegraph office and the introduction of the Parcel Post Service. This led to the issue of several types of Parcel Post label and further datestamps and handstamps in the 1900s to meet an ever changing number of requirements.

Registration facilities were available from the mid-1800s at Alderney and the earliest registration label known from Alderney was a ‘D’ type label used in 1910. Other types followed from then.

Circular packet datestamps are known to have been used from the 1950s and with the Guernsey Post Office achieving postal independence in October 1969, newly designed datestamps were then issued.