Welcome to Irish Post Offices.
The first time I went to Ireland I was fascinated by the landscapes, the monuments, the people and the way of life.
But what did capture my attention was the simplicity of the Post Offices.
Where I live, and I think almost anywhere else in the world, post offices are dull and they all look alike. They are cold and uninspiring buildings, with no charm at all. In the most fortunate cases a sad sign will tell you the name of the town that a post office is in.
In some other cases, like in Italy, a yellow sign with a cryptic number will identify the post offices through a code. It’ll be hard to tell a post office from another one and a simple photo won’t be of help to remember where that office is.
In Ireland I found out that even a place where people go to with no aim of having fun can be nice to look at.
All the Irish Post Offices have a beautiful green sign that carries the name of the town in two languages, Irish and English.
Another amazing feature of these post offices is that they are often more than a simple post office. They can be a grocery store, a stationery shop, or both and even more, like a petrol station. If the town or the village is very small the post office may be the only focal point for the community, so it isn’t unusual for an Irish customer to send a parcel and to buy some milk and the newspaper at the same moment.
In other likewise amazing cases the post office can be in a private house, and the person who lives in that house is the same that, in a dedicated room of their home, works behind the counter.
For a tourist or a traveller that wants to ramble out of the classic beaten paths, post offices can serve as a convenient and useful place where to ask for information and directions. Usually the employees of these offices are local people, so it’s very likely that they know the area very well, and can give you help to reach even the most remote part of the area or reveal you a hidden and interesting spot. Given the extreme kindness of the Irish this is a very powerful combination to enhance the quality of your travel.
When I saw this new way of intending a post office I couldn’t help myself from taking some photos. My first travel to Ireland was in August 1989 and so far I did 15 trips to the Emerald Isle. Until 2003 I only took photographs with my 35mm camera, so many of those post offices are on a slide film. Only in my last holidays I started taking photos with a digital camera. And these are the photos I’m showing in this site. Maybe someday I will scan the older slides and upload them to this website. Meanwhile have a look at the ones already in the archive.
Every post office in this website is displayed with its two names, English and Irish, the county where it’s in, a simple explanation or a line for directions and the date when the photo was taken.
Due to a downsizing of the Irish mail service some of the smaller post offices have been closed since I took the photo and maybe more will close in the future. This means that I can’t guarantee that a post office shown here is still there now. Should this be the case, this website will serve as a memory of how they were. For this reason I fear that many of them will be closed before I am able to take a photo of them.
With a click you will able to see the position of the post office on a map.
Enjoy your visit and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment in the guestbook.
For any question or need you can contact me through my email.
NOTICE: In June 2016 I have been contacted by the Gardaí regarding my activity of photographing the small Post Offices in the Republic of Ireland, and they told me to refrain from taking more photos. Until a solution is found I will not be able to add more photographs. Please, be patient.
There are 291 Irish Post Offices in the archive.