CUSTOMERS who visited Oxford’s main post office in St Aldate’s couldn’t fail to see its wonderful mosaic floor.

It was a fine example of old-fashioned craftsmanship and the seven motifs which formed part of it attracted universal admiration.

After many years of wear, the floor became so badly chipped that it almost reached the stage of being dangerous.

But the Post Office regarded the designs so highly that when, in 1966, it was time to replace the floor, it had them copied and installed on plaques on the wall and above the counter.

We were reminded of this unlikely beauty spot in Oxford by reader David Brown, of Jordan Hill, who remembered walking on the mosaics with hundreds of other customers.

He writes: “They were removed when the Post Office was modernised in 1966. I recall an article in the Oxford Mail covering this sad occasion and reading that the mosaics were copied as pictures that were hung on the wall of the new interior.

“Since then, modernisation has again taken place and now the pictures have disappeared altogether.”

A search in the Oxford Mail library uncovered this picture which appeared in the paper in 1973 when columnist Anthony Wood interviewed William Henry Hosken, who had designed the mosaics in the mid-1930s.

He worked for the Vitreous Mosaic and Tile Company in Battersea, London, which had developed a new synthetic material for its products.

Mr Hosken recalled: “It was the loveliest material of its type on the market – beautiful stuff – and we used to get a lot of high-class orders not only in this country but abroad. We did the new lavatories for the House of Lords and a bathroom for the Duke of Windsor in Paris.

“I remember the Oxford Post Office floor because I got a call from the architect to go to the Office of Works to see him about it. His draughtsman couldn’t get a fish right, and he asked me to do it. When I brought it back, he was most enthusiastic and said: ‘You’d better design the rest of the motifs’. So I did.

“They weren’t cheap – in fact, I would say, for those days, they were pretty expensive and quite rare in public buildings.”

The St Aldate’s post office was built in 1881 and the interior was redesigned in 1935 when the mosaic floor was installed and in 1966 when it was removed and the images installed on the plaques.

The official reopening on September 26, 1935 was performed by the Assistant Postmaster General, Sir Ernest Bennett, and that on April 4, 1966 by the Lord Mayor of Oxford, Alderman Kathleen Lower.

The Oxford Mail returned to the story of the mosaic floor in 1973 when Mr Hosken’s daughter, Prudence Nash, wrote in asking if anyone had a picture of it.

Sadly, no photographs of it appear to have survived, if indeed any were taken.

The photographers who attended the reopening in 1935 were so fascinated by other features of the building that none of them seems to have taken a picture of the floor.

The plaques showed:

Caduceus: the serpent-entwined staff of Mercury, messenger of the gods

Owl: symbol of wisdom

Fish: symbol of Christianity

Lamp: symbol of knowledge

Torch: symbol of immortality

Ship: symbol of travel

Sun: symbol of power and energy

The mosaic designs installed above the counter at St Aldate’s Post Office in Oxford in 1966