There is record of a Post Office having been established in Bristol by the Convention Parliament in 1670, but the site is unknown, and probably the postmaster had post horses--not letters--to attend to. In the year 1700 Mr. Henry Pine, the postmaster of the day, was one of the parties to an agreement for leasing a piece of land "with liberty to build upon the same for the conveniency of a Post Office." The wording of the said agreement shows that the old-fashioned form of building was not in every instance (as it now seems to us to have been) so grotesquely shaped from fancy, or, perhaps, from a desire to economise ground space, for it is therein expressly stated that the building to be used for a Post Office was to have the second storey extended to a truss of eighteen inches over the lane, for the purpose of enabling people to stand in the dry; for there was no indoor accommodation for the public provided in those days. "Let the imaginative reader," wrote an imaginative writer years ago, "picture to himself our great-great-grandfathers in doublet and ruff, standing in a row under the eighteen-inch truss, while the worthy postmaster, Pine himself, with perhaps one assistant, was sorting the contents of the mail bag. Doubtless," wrote he, "they grumbled when it rained that the said truss was not half a dozen inches wider, and many a person as he became saturated in his time of waiting for his letters growled out his intention of doing something very desperate to the powers that were." In the "Bargain" books of the Corporation is the following memorandum relating to the foregoing:-- "_22nd June, 1700._ Then agreed by the Surveyors of the city lands with Henry Pine, deputy postmaster, that he, the said Henry Pine, shall have, hold, and enjoy the ground whereon now stands a shedd having therein four severall shopp seituate in All Saints' Lane, and as much more ground at the lower end of the same shedd as that the whole ground shall contain in length twenty-seven foot, and to contain in breadth from the outside to the churchyard wall five foot and a half outward into the lane, with liberty to build upon the same for conveniency of a Post Office (namely) The first storey to go forth into the said lane to the extent of that ground and no farther, and the second storey to have a truss of eighteen inches over the lane or more as the said Surveyors shall think fitt that persons coming to the Post Office may have shelter from the rain and stand in the dry. To hold the same from Michaelmas next for fifty years absolute in the yearly rent of 30s. clear of taxes...." This agreement must have been afterwards modified. For some reason or other, Pine paid no rent until Michaelmas, 1705, when a sum of 25s. was received by the Chamberlain, and "The post house produced the same yearly sum until 1742 when the rent was raised to £3."