The Chinley Postmaster

 

 By Tony Whittaker

 

Postmaster Henry Gregory

Like stationmaster Samuel Hart, the Chinley postmaster was a significant figure in the community. And Samuel was very familiar with the inside operation of post offices, since his mother had taken over Mapperley Post Office when he was still teenager and he doubtless assisted from time to time. When the Hart family moved to Chinley, Henry Gregory had been village postmaster for 16 years, the first holder of that office. In 1885 the village had submitted a ‘memorial’ (ie petition) requesting that the community should have its own post office. At that time, the nearest were in Hayfield and Chapel. The candidates for the post would necessarily need to be operating a shop already. After the choice of grocer Mrs Smith somehow fell though, Henry was chosen. He already operated a print, newsagent and stationary shop close to the old station, on the corner by the railway bridge and opposite what was later the Princes Hotel, the location still known at that time as Four Lane Ends. (The terrace of houses was named Springfield View; the address 1 Buxton Rd. Older Chinley residents will remember the shop as Mr King’s newsagents.) The post office side opened on Saturday 30 March 1886, with an official handover by a Buxton Post Office official. A postbox had been installed earlier in the week. Both Henry and his wife Mary nee Goddard were well-known active Nonconformists, with Henry taking many preaching and other engagements at Wesleyan and Congregational churches in the area. Mary too came from a longstanding local Nonconformist family who in past years had entertained Charles Wesley during his preaching visits to the area. As both postmaster and newsagent, Henry would frequently go to the station to collect incoming mailbags and bundles of newspapers from the wholesalers brought by early morning trains, and return with outgoing mailbags later in the day. So Samuel and Henry would be very well-known to each other, and his son Wilton, who after junior school started aged 11 at Chapel National Boys School in 1879. In 1906, Wilton took over the post office, which later moved to the very handsome 1912 new parade of four redbrick shops on Green Lane. 

 

Henry had a time serving on the parish council, as Harry later would do. Wilton was still postmaster in 1921 at the spacious Green Lane post office premises with his wife Evelyn. They had three daughters: Marion still at school, Edna helping in the post office, and Lena living there with husband Jack Bamford, a Midland Railway signalman, along with their grandson Fred, who would later also work on the railway. Wilton resigned as postmaster in November 1923 due to ill health, aged only 54.
 
Incidentally, the freehold of a number of the Princes Rd houses and the Green Lane shops came up for sale in April 1924, so occupants were surely leaseholders before this date. In 1924, Mrs Hutton appears to have been the postmistress. In 1939 Herbert Lomax was postmaster, living over the shop with wife Hilda.