Little is known about the early history of the Old Post Office but it appears to have originated in the C17 as a three-bay dwelling with a cross wing, possibly with a central service room plan. During this period, unheated service rooms were generally placed at one end of the house but in some instances this room was placed in the middle of the house between the two principal heated living rooms. It is not clear where the original entrance was located or whether the staircase between the second and third bay is in its original position. A two-storey extension was built at the rear on the west side of the crosswing. It is said that that the beams used for the ceiling came from the church at the nearby Flawforth, which was demolished in the 1770s. By this time however, plaster ceilings had more or less replaced exposed ceiling beams so it is likely that the extension dates to the late C17 or early C18. On the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1884, the building is shown to be divided into two dwellings. One dwelling consisted of the first bay, the service room in the central bay, and the rear extension; and the other consisted of the third bay, the staircase in the central bay, and the cross wing. The staircase providing access to the first floor in the former dwelling has been removed. The map also shows a large outbuilding to the north-east. In the mid-1860s, several years after the introduction of the Penny Post, a letter box was placed in the wall of the house to receive the mail for the residents of Edwalton. It was then the home of William Taylor, the parish Clerk, and his wife Ann. After their deaths in the 1880s, it passed to Tom Cook, a coal dealer, who became the first Sub Postmaster of Edwalton when the first village post office with the status of Country Sub Office was opened in 1891. In 1910 he was succeeded by his daughter Annie Cook who was Edwalton’s Postmistress for 30 years, still working from the house. It is thought that the first bay of the building was used as a post office. After the Second World War, the post office moved elsewhere in the village. At some point before 1953 a fire broke out. Some of the burnt rafters were replaced and the thatch roof covering was replaced by clay tiles. In the second half of the C20, the front door and ground-floor WC were built; a wide bay window was inserted in the rear extension; and the east side of the crosswing was opened up and a lean-to extension added in order to create a larger kitchen. The house has been unoccupied since 2017 and is in a state of disrepair. (1) The Old Post Office, a house dating to the C17 with a late C17 or early C18 extension, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: Architectural interest: * it is a good example of a vernacular dwelling dating to the C17, illustrating the building materials and practices used over three centuries ago; * it retains a legible plan form with an unusual central service bay; * a significant proportion of the original fabric survives, including the openings and substantial bressumers for two wide inglenooks, the roughly chamfered bridging or spine beams and joists in all the ground-floor rooms, and numerous doors dating to the late C17 or early C18. Historic interest: * it has played a significant part in the history of Edwalton, serving as its first Post Office in the late C19 until the Second World War. Group value: * it is prominently located on a corner of the main village street, diagonally opposite the Grade II* listed Church of the Holy Rood and its Grade II listed lychgate, with which it has strong group value.