Post Office Row

Post Office Row is a picturesque terrace of two-storey brick cottages with small front gardens, pantile roofs and vertical-planked doors (all except no 24).

No 22 (The Old Bakehouse) has original inward-opening casement windows and is probably the oldest cottage in the row. The lower floor rooms have beamed ceilings and access to the upstairs was once by ladder in the corner of the room.

At the moment we can't use the 19^th century Census results for this area to place people in individual houses. In the future we hope new information from house deeds (or the lot 35 abstract-of-title document from the 1918 Sale) will come to light to allow us to cross reference the routes taken by census enumerators. However, we do have this portion of Reverent Frederick Taverner?s sketch map which shows village occupants in 1857. John Roberts, headmaster of the school lived in the row with his wife Sarah and their daughter, the future village matriarch Mrs Mary Walster.

The 1918 Estate Sale

The row got its modern name because William Sharp, tenant of No 21 in 1918, used the front room as the Post Office. This was not the site of the earliest post office in Coddington - this was William Ellis's cobblers shop, lower down on Main St, close to the Red Lion pub and nearly opposite the entrance to Chapel Lane. See more information about post offices and postmasters here. (Insert link)

In the 1918 Estate Sale catalogue Post Office Row is lot 35 - consisting of 5 brick-built and tiled cottages with gardens, situated a short distance west of the schools. They had small front gardens and 'an extensive piece of garden ground at the back with ample outbuildings, partly brick-built and partly boarded'.

The tenant for No 21 Main St was William Sharp and it contained 'a sitting room, another front room that was used as the Post Office with entrance from the front garden, 2 bedrooms, good landing, kitchen, pantry and lobby'.

In 1918 the tenants of lot 35 were: Mrs Bryan, Frederick Hall, Thomas Carby, William Sharp and William Ward. The other cottages were describes as:

No 18 and 19 - living room, 2 bedrooms, kitchen, pantry

No 20 - living room, 3 bedrooms, kitchen, pantry, wash house

No 21 - see above

No 22 - 2 up, 2 down

Mr C R Daybell of Coddington bought Lot 35 for £460.

After 1920

In 1923 William Sharp was still the sub-postmaster at the Post and Telegraph Office. Letters arrived from Newark, which was the nearest money order office. By 1928 telephones had come to the village - the trade directory describes 'Post T & T E D Office' and some villagers boast phone numbers of the form Newark 281X7. By 1936 Telegraph services are now only obtainable in Newark. William Sharp died in 1937 and in 1938 the shop and post office was run by Mrs Helen Sharp. Later their daughter Francis A (Molly) Sharp was postmistress.

In 1957 and 1961 Directories there are no addresses listed as Post Office Row, and although many Main St addresses do not have numbers or house names the following people were certainly living in Post Office Row in this period:

20 Main St - John Goodband

(21) The Post Office - Frances A Sharp

22 Main St - Montague Henton.

22 Main St - Jane Mills

Some time in the 1960s the Post Office moved to lower down Main St, to Orchards opposite the Inn on the Green. Bernard Mastin ran it from there until retired in the early 1990s. The Post Office then migrated to its current position on Newark Road, opposite Enfin and near the former Lodge of Coddington Hall.

The cottages of Post Office row became quite dilapidated and like many of the old village cottages were threatened with demolition. Thankfully this didn't happen, the row was restored and sold to private owners, and today forms an important piece of our village's heritage.