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Letters and parcels were a crucial way for servicemen and their families to keep in touch. To cope with the vast volume of mail being sent to troops around the world, in December 1914, the Post Office built a special sorting office called the Home Depot in Regent鈥檚 Park. A gigantic wooden hut, covering several acres, contained what was then the largest sorting depot in the world. Two and a half thousand staff, many of them women, were employed to sort the post

Mail was addressed to military units rather than to a specific location. This was done to preserve secrecy, but also because units moved at very short notice.

Once post arrived overseas it became the responsibility of the Army Post Office to deliver the mail to the postal orderly of each military unit. Despite the volume of mail, the service was highly efficient. In some cases mail that left the Home Depot at 7am reached its destination by 7pm the very same day. On average, a letter from Britain that was not held up by the censor would reach the Western Front in two days. The delivery of post to prisoners of war was free of charge with a reciprocal agreement made with all the countries involved in the conflict.

By the end of the war, an estimated two billion letters and 114 million parcels had passed through the Depot.

Location: Regent鈥檚 Park, Camden, London NW1 4NR
Image shows post being sorted at the depot, courtesy of The British Postal Museum and Archive
Presented by David Friend with archive audio of Caroline Rennles courtesy of Imperial War Museums

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