An Post Museum
The An Post Museum or GPO Museum was located in the General Post Office in Dublin, Ireland opened on 28 July 2010. It closed on 30 May 2015 to make way for the new GPO: Witness History Interpretive Centre. It was a small museum which offered visitors an insight into the role played by the Post Office in the development of Irish society over many generations.[1]
As well as Irish stamps and philatelic information and a scale model of the GPO, there were several audio visual presentations, An Post's copy of the 1916 Proclamation and a Pepper's ghost dramatisation about the role of the staff who were actually on duty in the GPO on Easter Monday 1916.
Much of the information and audio visual material contained in the museum continues to be available on the website. The physical museum will be replaced by a new Interpretive Centre housing a permanent exhibition marking the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, and it will focus on a theme of the GPO as ‘Witness to History’.
The An Post Museum was divided into three sections.
The Art of the Stamp
The Art of the Stamp section offers visitors the opportunity to view Ireland's stamps from the turn of the Free State right up to today by using the interactive stamps database. In this section of the museum there is also a stamps design tool that teaches people about how stamps are made today using digital formats. There are fine examples of stamp printing plates used to make Ireland's first definitive stamps.
The Post Office in Ireland
This section offer visitors the chance to hear the stories of retired post office staff members by the means of using a modified Switchboard. People can listen to the experiences from differenet departments within the Irish Post Office when it was known as The Post and Telegraphs(P&T).
There are a number of short visual documentaries detailing the foundation of the Irish Post Office which track its movement from Dublin Castle to its current site O'Connell Street. People can learn how the methods of delivering mails has changed with improvements in technology.
Easter 1916
This area displays a copy of the Proclamation of Ireland that was read aloud by Padraig Pearse from the front the GPO on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916. The design surrounding the Proclamation shows different pictorial views of the damaged GPO after the rebels surrendered to the British Army. There is a holographic re-enactment of events that took place in the Telegraph Room when the rebels took over the communications room. The film is based on eyewitness accounts taken from the staff members involved. It is a little-known part of the events that took place during the Rising.
References
- ↑ Gleeson, Colin (2010-07-29). "GPO opens doors to An Post's past". Irish News. Irish Independent. Retrieved 2014-07-01.