Nuwara Eliya Post Office (Sinhala: නුවර එළිය තැපැල් කාර්යාල ගොඩනැගිල්ල) is located in Queen Elizabeth Drive in the Administrative Limits of Nuwara Eliya Municipal Council in Nuwara Eliya District, Sri Lanka. It is considered one of the oldest British buildings in Nuwara Eliya and one of the oldest post offices established in the country.
History
Constructed in 1894, the two-story building typically resembles architectural features belonging to the British (Wijesinghe, 2015). The facade of the building is in the classic English Tudor style architecture with red colour bricks. The stripes and the roof have given an authentic colonial appearance to the building. The three-storied clock tower ends with a pyramidal-shaped roof and its clock is worked by an automated electric system (Wijesinghe, 2015).
Commemorative Stamp
Sri Lanka Post issued a Rs. 10.00 value stamp depicting the Nuwara Eliya Post Office to commemorate the 175 years of the Sri Lanka Postal Service on 26 December 1990.
Protests over hotel projects
There were protests in 2017 and again in 2023 over government plans to sell the heritage buildings of post offices at Nuwara Eliya, Kandy and Galle Fort to private developers, to convert them into hotels.
A Protected Building
The post office building bearing Assessment No. 50 in Nuwara Eliya Administrative Limits is an archaeological protected monument, declared by a government gazette notification published on 23 February 2007.
See Also
#) Former General Post Office (Colombo Fort)
References
1) The Gazette of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, no: 1486. 23 February 2007. p.126.
2) Wijesinghe, T.K., 2015. Pauranika Sthana Saha Smaraka: Nuwara Eliya Distrikkaya (In Sinhala). Department of Archaeology (Sri Lanka). ISBN: 955-9159-36-4. p.83.