Somerset & Bristol Postal History

All of the IMPs started using the 6-line "Royal Mail / Bath Bristol / Taunton" date block apart from IMP 2 which used a "Bristol" 4-line block between May and November 2009.

Use of the 6-line date block caused some slogans to be truncated.

In the sheet below one can see three different formats of the date block:  two different 6-line blocks with "T" under "B" and with "Taunton" centred, and a 4-line block.  The slogan is OK on the 4-line "Bristol" block but is truncated on the top two.

As the cutover of IMPs from Cueprint to PostJet printers continued, slogan cancels in two different formats were being used.  This first slogan was initially produced as "AIR DISPLAY / STAMPS ON SALE" rather than "AIR DISPLAYS / STAMPS ON SALE" but was corrected after a few days.  The top two covers below show the Cueprint slogans with 8 wavy lines, while the bottom is the PostJet slogan with 6 wavy lines.

The "Nominate your / hero" appears in a 3-line format on the Cueprint IMPs and a 2-line format on the PostJet ones.

"MOVING / HOME ?" also appears on the Cueprint printers.

After trials in Leeds, IMPs nationwide were converted from Cueprint printers to use Postjet printers between April and October 2008.

Not all the IMPs were changed at the same time.  Bristol implementation started with IMP 3 in May 2008, followed by IMPs 1, 4 and 5, then IMPs 6, 7 and 8.  IMP 2 continued to use the original Cueprint printers into September 2008.

Initial implementation used a "Bristol" 4-line date block (no "Royal Mail") ...

... before cutting over to a "Royal Mail / Bath Bristol / Taunton" 6-line date block, with the "T" of "Taunton" under the "B" of "Bath".