From 1799 the Post Office began to produce ‘Directories’. By 1835 they were sold to Frederic Kelly who continued to publish them for each county as ‘Kelly’s Post Office Directory’. Frederic Festus Kelly (d.1883) began working for the Post Office in 1819 and by about 1835 was chief inspector of letter carriers. Part of his responsibilities at this point was the production of the London Directory, the first being in 1843. Effectively it was a private enterprise but undertaken with the permission of the Post Office. In 1845 he published one of the six Home Counties which included maps for the first time. Over the ensuing years several others were published of parts of the country.

They were engraved by Francis Becker (1807-63) and Benjamin Rees Davies (1789?-1872). All of them were gathered into the ‘Post Office Directory Atlas of England and Wales’, [1861]. When that series reached the end of their lives, they were replaced with these larger maps derived largely from those of Edward Weller. This example contains three counties, each with name stamped on the paper edges. Both Burgess and Kingsley record that the maps are often missing or in poor condition. Kingsley does not record an example of this new map in the 1878 edition. With over 2000 pages of this work contains a wealth of information for researchers. Kelly’s Directories continued publication of the maps for some time and only ceased publication in the 1970s. Beresiner (1983) pp. 128-9; Burgess (2009) 180; refer Carroll (1996) 116; refer Chubb (1927) 546; Kingsley (1982) 133C; Smith (1985) pp. 141-2; Tooley’s Dictionary (1999-2004); Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).