Immersive Theater Experience

The first floor of the museum has been restored to the furnishings of the old Aberdeen Post Office. The space is filled with an immersive and interactive atmosphere. Let you have more interest in the history of the Aberdeen Post Office, and immerse yourself in the story. Here is an outline of the story of the immersive performance.

Our
Story

What is immersive theater?

The biggest innovation in the form of immersive theatre is to break the distance between the traditional stage and the audience. There is no specific division between the audience and the stage in immersive drama, and the distance between the audience and the actors is greatly reduced. The audience can choose the viewing route at will in the free and open theater space, and truly become the "master" in the theater. Therefore, in immersive theater, the audience is also a part of the performance, and immersive theater will pay more attention to the "experience" of the audience.

During the 1700s, it took three days for mail to get to Edinburgh from Aberdeen’s post office on Shiprow via courier.

But the introduction of a mail coach in 1778 – nicknamed The Fly – sped up the process slightly to a mere 32-hour delivery time.

A surviving 1840s mail coach from the British Postal Museum.

The improvement of roads, and additional stops with fresh relays of horses available, saw a huge advance in the efficiency of Aberdeen’s postal system.

A new time record was set on July 31 1798 when four horses were dispatched with a coach at 9pm in Edinburgh, arriving in Aberdeen at 6am the next morning.

And by 1811, daily postal and passenger services were running from Dempster’s Hotel on Union Street in Aberdeen to Inverness.

In 1818, four postmen were employed to cover Aberdeen and district, but they weren’t paid by the post office – instead they were paid by those who received the letters.

A table showing the growth of postal services in Aberdeen between 1876 and 1906 – the year before the purpose-built Crown Street Post Office was built.

The growing postal economy saw the location of Aberdeen’s post office – and postmaster Alexander Dingwall – move from various premises in Netherkirkgate to Castle Street, to 40 Union Street and back to Netherkirkgate.

Aberdeen’s first standalone post office opened on Market Street in 1841, and the penny post and adhesive stamps – invented by James Chalmers of Dundee – were brought to the masses.

Aberdonians were also encouraged to “cut slits in doors” – letterboxes – for the delivery of mail.

By 1850, 27,000 letters were delivered weekly in Aberdeen, the city had a number of sub-post offices and, within a decade, mail trains replaced mail coaches.

A photo of the gold key presented to the postmaster-general when Crown Street Post Office opened.

In the late 1800s another site at the bottom of Market Street was acquired to establish a bigger post office to keep up with demand, but even this was not adequate.

Postmen were having to sort mail in their Shiprow apartments, and a building that could meet the demands of telegraph was needed.

Grand opening

And in 1907, after five-and-a-half years of construction, a grand new post office with towers, battlements, parapets, stepped gables and gargoyles was unveiled.

The £50,000 three-storey structure, built from dressed Kemnay and Rubislaw granite, featured an ornate entrance on Crown Street.

The inside of the post office was befitting of the exterior grandeur, and the pomp and circumstance of its opening ceremony.

The main hall at the Crown Street Post Office was a busy scene in March 1971, some customers had waited more than an hour to be served.

The telegraph instrument room featured the latest technology: telegrams were sent down a pneumatic tube which would discharge onto a counter.

First-class facilities

The post office was built with the welfare of its workforce in mind.

A popular facility was the first floor dining club, a large-scale canteen which provided postal staff with government-subsidised hot meals.

Aberdeen Post Office dining hall in 1968 with a mural depicting the industries of Aberdeen painted by city art teacher JB Edwards.

The second floor housed the telegraph school, where male and female learners were taught the intricacies of operating telegraph instruments, switchboards and transcribing morse scripts.

A busy communication headquarters, The Great Northern Company’s telegraph cables were laid from Norway to Peterhead and on to the Crown Street Post Office.

Over the North Sea cables, messages were sent from Aberdeen to Russia, Romania, China, the Philippines, New Zealand and beyond.

By the time the Crown Street Post Office opened, Aberdeen was handling more than 2,000,000 telegrams a year.

War and peace

Just a few years later, the post office made the headlines when it was targeted by suffragettes.

At Crown Street Post Office, two large windows by the main entrance were smashed.

Two small hammers with inscriptions attached demanding the release of imprisoned suffragists and ‘Votes for Women’ were found at the scene.

In the post-war years, the post office continued to go from strength to strength.

In 1938, a pioneering ‘mobile post office’ – in the form of a red tractor and trailer – visited Aberdeen.

The idea behind the post office on wheels was that it could be parked at open-air events and people could send letters and postcards home.

But away from the fun and folly of day trips, hard times were just around the corner.

Upon the outbreak of war in 1939, many male members of staff again answered the call for King and Country.

The Crown Street Post Office keenly felt the losses of war once again, with several staff members killed or taken as prisoners of war.

Challenging times ahead

The 1960s also saw a revolution in the postal system in Aberdeen: the introduction of postcodes.

Glasgow had had its own system in place since the 1920s, but Aberdeen was the first city in Scotland to officially roll-out the postcode system in 1967.

The 1970s and 80s brought their own challenges for the post office.

Britain’s first-ever national postal strike took place in 1971 when workers walked out for seven weeks after demands for a 15-20% pay rise were refused.

Later in the decade, there were more serious concerns.

Sub-post offices became the target of stealthy killer Donald Neilson, nicknamed the ‘black panther’.

A new century

By the 1990s, the day to day role of the post office had radically changed from 1907.

And nearly 90 years after it opened, the listed, Edwardian headquarters on Crown Street was no longer fit for purpose.

An extension had already been added to cope with the introduction of mechanisation, but the building could not cope with growing automation and machinery.

A new £10 million base was built at Altens and staff had vacated Crown Street by October.

Postal cadet Scott Sheen climbing the old post office gates in the 1990s.

The building was sold for £1.5 million and after years of back and forth, plans were granted to transform the building into 26 flats with a further 64 built on the site of the modern extension.

During the conversion work, old tunnels were unearthed and a vault containing 100 old posties’ bikes was discovered.

The building couldn’t carry the changing post office into the 21st century, but the new development – complete with a residents’ sauna, gym and underground car park – opened in 2001, renamed New Century House.