Apost house,posthouse, orposting house was a house or inn where horses were kept and could be rented or changed out.Postriders could also be hired to take travellers[1] by carriage or coach and delivered mail and packages on a route, meeting up at various places according to a schedule. Routes includedpost roads. Apostmaster was an individual from whom horses and/or riders known aspostilions or "post-boys" who might help a coachman drive coaches could be hired. A postilion might also travel on a coach to take back his employer's horses. The postmaster would reside in the post house.[2]
Post houses functioned as thepost offices of their day as national mail services came later.
Organised systems of posthouses providing swift mounted courier service seems quite ancient, although sources vary as to precisely who initiated the practice. By the time of theAchaemenid Empire, a system ofChapar Khaneh existed along theRoyal Road inPersia. The second-century BCMauryan andHan empires established similar systems inIndia andChina.Suetonius creditedAugustus with regularising theRoman network, thecursus publicus. Local officials were obliged to provide couriers who would be responsible for their message's entire course. Locally maintained post houses (Latin:stationes) or privately owned rest houses (Latin:mansiones) were obliged or honored to care for them along their way.Diocletian later established two parallel systems: one providing fresh horses or mules for urgent correspondence and another providing sturdy oxen for bulk shipments.Procopius, though not unbiased, records that this system remained largely intact until it was dismantled in thesurviving empire byJustinian in the 6th Century.
Inearly modern England, post riders –mounted couriers – were placed ("posted")[3] every few hours along post roads at posting houses or post houses between major cities (post towns). Thesestables orcoaching inns permitted important correspondence to travel without delay. In early America,post offices were also known as "stations". This term and post house fell from use as horse andmail coach service was replaced byrail transport,railway post offices,aircraft,airmail, and automobiles includingmail trucks.
TheFour Swans Inn inWaltham Cross,Hertfordshire was one of the original post houses set up in the 1500s where men carrying mail, and later the regular mail coaches, could change horses. It was demolished in the late 1960s to make way for the Pavilion shopping centre and multi storey car park.
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