Tickhill Post Office

The earliest located references to postal services in Tickhill appear in 1820s trade directories; in 1822 the Red Lion in Market Place is also described as the Excise & Post Office, with the licensee, Richard Binge acting as postmaster. Several years later Mrs Sarah Binge assumed responsibility for postal services for 20 years or so from an address in Northgate. Letters were despatched via Bawtry every day before lunch and Tickhill post arrived via Bawtry for collection every afternoon; from the early 1840s, a similar service via Rotherham had been introduced.

By 1848, Reuben Lye, a former schoolmaster at a ‘gentlemen’s commercial & boarding school’ on Sunderland Street, was established as ‘postmaster and sub-distributor of stamps’ at the Post Office in Market Place on the corner of Sunderland Street. The appointment of Reuben Lye was the beginning of a century of service to the Post Office by the Lye family. Following his death in 1850, his daughter Mary became postmistress; she was assisted by her nephew, Henry Lye and niece, Martha Lye, who were both letter carriers.  

Mary Lye continued as postmistress until the mid-1860s, by which time George Lye, a plumber by trade had taken over, (he may have been Mary’s brother, but this has not been verified). By the early 1880s, his second wife, Louisa was officially assisting as a ‘Civil Service Clerk’; a decade later the Post Office had incorporated the telegraph office and, his daughter, Louisa Ann was working as a telegraphist and her younger sister, Alice as a telegraph messenger. Following George’s death in 1896, his widow, Louisa was appointed Sub-Postmistress and her daughters, Louisa Ann, Emily and Bertha, post office assistants. Post-1919, the Misses Lye, as they were known, ran the Post Office until the 1940s; it also sold stationary, sweets and tobacco, newspapers and toys; after World War Two it moved to its present site in Sunderland Street, where postmasters have been the McNulty’s, and Bill and Muriel Watkinson.