THE POST is in the past for Mary Jordan of Bratton Clovelly who retired last week after almost 45 years as the village?s popular postmistress. It was the end of an era as the village post office has been in Mary?s family since 1863, with her grandmother and father having previously run the business. Mary finished her last day at work on Wednesday week and during the day many people dropped in to wish her well. She was also interviewed by BBC television and radio. Many of the villagers gathered in the square at the end of the day to wish Mary well upon her retirement. They said she went above and beyond the call of duty as a postmistress. Mary said things were quite different on her first day: ?When I took it on first, back in December 1961, we had three mail rounds and we used to start at half six in the morning.? Mary said the biggest change during her time as postmistress, was living through decimalisation. ?Lots of the customers kept reverting back to old money. Another change is that ways of communication are different. There aren?t as many letters being sent as there were; nowadays people have e-mail and faxes and they can do their banking on the internet.? Mary added: ?I don?t know where 45 years have gone. Bratton wouldn?t have been a post office without its customers, so I want to thank them all. It has been a great pleasure to have been postmistress and I have made many friends. ?One of my oldest customers was in earlier. He is a man of 90 and he said he can remember me when I started going to Sunday School.? Mary has lived in the village for most of her life, except for a few years when she went away to secretarial college. However, after she married Reg, they came back to Bratton and took on the business, becoming one of the country?s longest-serving postmistresses. Mary said she still enjoyed her job but had taken the decision to retire to be able to spend more time with Reg. The couple are hoping to travel, something which hasn?t always been easy in the past, because of the demands of running the sub-post office. Mary plays an important part in village life. She has been a member of the parish council for several years and is a member of the twinning association ? Bratton Clovelly is twinned with the Normandy town of Nonant, to which Mary said she had enjoyed a number of visits. Paul Bellamy, chair of Bratton Clovelly Parish Council. presented Mary with a bunch of flowers. He said: ?The post office is not just a post office, it is the hub of the village. It was somewhere to buy tickets for local events, an information point, somewhere to air grievances to Mary about the parish council.? A collection was held in the village for Mary and a total of £692 was raised to thank her for the service she had given. Villagers do not want to lose their post office and it is hoped a satellite post office service could be run for around a dozen hours a week in the pub. Landlord of the Clovelly Inn Torben Hughes said discussions were continuing to try to find someone prepared to take on the operation.
