Dear People of the World,

Please will you help us try and make something special happen on a local, national, and even global level? The 6th May 2025 marks the 185th anniversary of the Penny Black stamp being valid for use and I just wondered if there was a way to encourage everyone to post a letter on that day to celebrate the occasion in solidarity for all our wonderful postal services and of course handwritten letters. I want to see if with a little promotion and perhaps a fun, collective, and historic activity we could make people fall in love with letter writing again.

Writing and posting a letter on 6th May can be for the novelty factor or for nostalgia or because you want to surprise a loved one, or even as a message to the world that letter writing still matters, or simply to commemorate the amazing invention of the postage stamp by Rowland Hill. You could even show someone who has never sent a letter before how it’s done. But whatever your reason for taking part, and even if it’s only just this once, I’d love to think all the postboxes around Britain and beyond will have a letter in them on this historic day.

For just 87p you can send a letter (2nd Class) to anywhere in the UK. The recipient will love your letter, guaranteed! You can even send one for FREE if you’d prefer to the CEO of Royal Mail using this FREEPOST address:

I hope you all know someone who would appreciate a letter but if not then honestly you can send one to me at THLAS HQ where it will be treasured in the Society archives.

If you’re not sure what to write about tell me why letter writing matters to you or what your experience of writing a letter is like. Hopefully our postal services will be around for a long time yet, but perhaps if we all send one together on 6th May it’ll mean handwritten letters will get the recognition they deserve. 68 million letters posted on one day (or maybe even 8 billion), now that would be a sight to behold!

Please join us if you’re able and if you can retweet or share to let as many people know as possible, that would be fab! And if you can find an off-the-beaten track postbox to post your letter in I bet you’ll make a postie’s day at collection time, too!

Thank you so much!

Dinah

PS If you wanted to share a photo of you posting your letter in a postbox (be careful not to photograph the address) we’d love to see them. Just tag us in @letterappsoc with the hashtag #PennyBlackDay. I wonder who the most well-known person will be who we can get to join in!

PPS Typed letters are of course valid too – just print them off, put them in an envelope, attach a stamp and put in a postbox.