Going for a song: the Warrington envelope that could fetch over £1k

Now 162 years later this rare Victorian envelope, below, is set to fetch up to £1,200 at auction.

The envelope – addressed to Mr Peter Stubs, Steel Works, Warrington – was posted from Exeter on November 4,1850.

It is expected to sell for between £1,000 and £1,200 at Spink in London later this month.

Peter Stubs, the 20-year-old who originally received the envelope, lived with his widowed mother Mary Stubs at Paddington Cottage, on Manchester Road.

In the 1851 Census Mr Stubs described himself as a file manufacturer.

In the same Census, his Liverpool-born mother described herself as a gentlewoman and she was sufficiently wealthy to be able to afford two live-in servants: Warrington-born Betty Hadfield, aged 26 and Grappenhall-born Ann Robinson, aged 20.

Peter Stubs’ envelope is now particularly valuable because of the one penny red-brown stamp in the top right hand corner.

It is one of the first perforated stamps – and possibly the first – to be sent to Warrington.

It is known as an Archer Perforation after the inventor of the postage stamp perforating machine, Henry Archer (1799-1863).

The Warrington envelope’s tell-tale November 1850 postmark confirms that this is one of the earliest so-called Archer Perforations.

Britain was the first country to issue postage stamps with perforations and the one penny red-brown stamp, which replaced the short-lived Penny Black, was the first stamp to be perforated.

It is possible that the Warrington envelope made the 189-mile journey from Exeter by horse-drawn mail coach as Warrington Bank Quay railway station did not open until 1868 while Warrington Central did not open until around 1873.

The envelope will go on sale on Thursday, January 26.

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