Page 478 - Sierra Leone to 1961 - The Collection

The Postmarks of Sierra Leone 1854 to 1961

There were 167 towns or villages that had a post office at some point up to independence in 1961. Additionally
there were four sub-offices in Freetown and two in Bo. Adding in the TPOs and military offices, there were
187 different post office in Sierra Leone. Of these 187 offices, 13 of them either never had a handstamp sent
or are only known from post office archives, leaving a maximum of 174 different offices to collect examples
from. After almost 30 years of collecting this material, I have managed to obtain examples from 155 of these,
although some are rather poor strikes... Of course many of these offices had several different handstamps, and
the second edition of the book lists and illustrates approximately 500 different devices.
Challenges in Collecting Early Village Postmarks
Until around 1910, the post office practice was to strike the handstamp of the despatching office on the
envelope leaving the GPO in Freetown to cancel the stamp. This means that very few QV or KEVII loose
stamps can be found with postmarks other than Freetown, hence the smaller villages can only normally be
found on covers.

11 February 1910 - Typical example of a village postmark being struck on the envelope, leaving the GPO to cancel the adhesive.

Postmarks in the King George VI Era

In 2001 I wrote a book entitled Sierra Leone King George VI Definitive Stamps, published by the West Africa
Study Circle.
The primary purpose of this work was to publish an analysis of the many printings recorded in the Waterlow
archive, but a chapter was included that illustrated postmarks from many different offices. The ‘press ready’
pages were stored and the stamps have never been re‑incorporated into my collection.
There were 119 different post offices or agencies that were open at some point between the accession of King
George VI (11 December 1936) and the withdrawal of postage stamps bearing his portrait (31 July 1956). Of
these, 72 are included on the following four pages.