Irish Spoons

With an exponential rise in the use of letters, by 1853 the British Post Office was looking into ways of speeding up the processing of mail and in late 1853 it introduced a 'duplex' cancellation that combined the numeral obliterator used to cancel the stamp and the date stamp usually applied to the back of the letter at an envelope, saving much time. The first significant duplex is the 'Spoon' cancellation, named so after the shape of the dater. It was introduced in Hull 24th December 1853 and then successfully rolled out at a number of other English and Irish towns and Wrexham in Wales. The 'Spoon' had always been a very popular area to collect with collectors seeking examples from the different towns, different sub types, covers with multiple stamps upon and attractive examples using stamps other than the 1d red. Probably 95% of spoons are found cancelling the 1d red perforate issue, occasionally 1d imperforates are found as are the more colourful surface printed stamps and rarely the embossed issues. A fun area to collect, several excellent books are available. 'English and Welsh Spoon cancels 1853-1870' by Richard Arundel, the second and much updated 2015 edition is recommended. There is also a very good 1997 publication 'Irish Spoon Cancels' by the same author.