Premises
Inside the Building
You can view a pack of pictures that show each of the rooms, floor by floor, by clicking here.
An Historic Location
The Society has moved to the heart of the old City of London. Abchurch Lane, first recorded as Abbechurche Lane in 1291, is a narrow street linking Cannon Street and King William Street which bisects it. The site was part of the old Roman city, and a Roman wall was excavated nearby in 1855.
Remarkably, it has a number of philatelic connections. The printing firm of Blades & East, later Blades, East & Blades, responsible for the first stamp issues of North Borneo, was at 11, and later 23, Abchurch Lane. As is widely known, Perkins, Bacon & Petch were the printers of the Penny Black. With its demise in 1935, a new company was formed called Perkins Bacon Ltd. It was owned by John Hubbard (1902-1976), past president of the Royal and its address was 22 Abchurch Lane, London EC4. Change Alley and Birkin Lane, where office boys bought, sold and exchanged stamps from the City trading houses as early as the 1860s, are close by.
The Corsini Correspondence is familiar to postal historians. The Florentine merchants, brothers Filippo and Bartholomew Corsini, lived in Gratious Street, now known as Gracechurch Street. Their archive was the only commercial correspondence addressed to the City of London known to have survived the Great Fire of 1666. Their home was a few minutes from our new home in Abchurch Lane, in the same ancient ward of Candlewick, one of the 25 electoral districts in the City of London.