CHAPTER III LOMBARD STREET AND ST. MARTIN'S LE GRAND Nothing will give the reader a better idea of the advances made by the Post Office during the last two hundred years than a comparison of the various buildings which have from time to time been the home of the General Post Office in London. The story of the buildings is one of continued growth and expansion right down to the present day. The General Post Office is always becoming too small and inconvenient for its work. And there has scarcely been any period when it was not necessary to rent overflow premises to meet the growing needs of the times. As I have already pointed out, the system of posts in the time of the Tudors was used chiefly for the conveyance of Government despatches. The Master of the Posts was a Court official, and there was no need for a public office in London. The extension of postal business, especially between London and the Continent, required, however, in the later years of the sixteenth century, an office in the City of London, and according to _Stow's Survey_ a post office was first established in Cloak Lane, near Dowgate Hill. This is the hill on which Cannon Street Station now stands, and it was also the centre of Roman London. The necessity of the foreign post was one of the reasons for the creation of the office, and it is a link between this time and our own that the continental mail train now starts from Cannon Street Station. Scarcely anything is known of this post office except the bare fact of its existence.