British Library Philatelic Collections

The British Library Philatelic Collections in London’s Camden borough holds the United Kingdom’s national stamp collection. Over eight million items come from every continent, including postage stamps, newspaper stamps and the press that printed Britain’s first stamps. The collection began in 1891 with Thomas Tapling’s bequest and grew through donations such as the Crawford Library of 4,500 philatelic books in 1913. Scholars value the holdings for research into British Empire and world postal history. Major gifts arrived from Edward Mosely’s African stamps in 1944 and H. L’Estange Ewen’s railway letter stamps in 1949. The Row Collection of Siamese stamps was digitised in 2025, making 24,473 high-resolution images freely available online. Visitors can see around 80,000 items on permanent display in the entrance gallery. Six thousand sheets fill one thousand frames, including 2,400 from the Tapling Collection. Researchers may request access to the remaining global material by appointment.