V&A Purchase Grant Fund
Hear this page read aloud
In 2006, museums, galleries, archives and specialist libraries nationwide marked the 125th anniversary of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund (now supported by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council) with special events and exhibitions. The Purchase Grant Fund supports heritage institutions in buying major works of art as well as more modest items. Institutions that have benefited from such help are marking this anniversary with various public displays and acknowledgements.
On two recent occasions, the V&A Purchase Grant Fund has enabled The BPMA to acquire two very different groups of paper items. With the Fund’s help we were able to buy some rare public notices advertising mail coach services and a selection of music sheets with a Post Office theme or connection.
In this section, there is one slideshow for the public notices, and another for the music sheets. Each slideshow has images of these purchases together with information about each one.
Notices
Our first grant from the Fund enabled us to buy six
printed notices that advertise the scheduled routes and times of mail coaches. Between 1784 and
1850, mail coaches were the main, long-distance mail carriers used by the Post
Office. They began and finished their
journeys at important inns such as the Swan with Two Necks in London.
Music sheets
Music does not, perhaps, easily spring to mind as having any
links with postal services. Yet in the 19th century, the subject of the
post and its employees found its way into the popular music of the day. When we were offered a selection of
printed music that had such a postal connection – whether in the title, the
lyrics or the image on the front cover – it was an opportunity not to be
missed. The V&A Purchase Grant Fund made it possible to acquire these items for
our collections.