A rare envelope, which cost one shilling (5p) to send to Bungay from the Caribbean island of Nevis 160 years ago, has now been sold for £480 at an auction.

The black-edged mourning envelope is addressed to Graystone B. Baker, Esq, Crown Bank, Bungay, Suffolk, and reached Mr Baker in Bungay on April 18, 1855, which is confirmed by the green Bungay arrival date stamp in the bottom right hand corner of the envelope.

The envelope sold for £480 at the Spink auction house in Bloomsbury, London.

Spinks was established in 1666 and the auction house specialises in auctioning stamps, coins and medals.

Bungay-born Graystone Bucke Baker worked at the Crown Bank, Bungay, and, according to the 1851 Census, he and his wife, Esther, their three eldest children, Henry, Bertha and Helen, Mr Baker's father-in-law Benjamin Baker, Beccles-born Inspector of Corn Returns, and the family's live-in servant, Alice Rayner, 19, lived at Market Square, Bungay.

Between 1851 and 1861, Mr and Mrs Baker had three more children: Edgar, Wallace and Alfred.

At the time of the 1861 Census, the Bakers employed a live-in servant, Ditchingham-born Helen Chapman, 24.

Graystone Baker was in his fifties when he received the mourning envelope after its tortuous 4,000 mile journey by ship from Nevis.

He was 77 when he died on June 24, 1878.

There were a number of important events during 1855, the year the Mr Baker's envelope arrived in Bungay.

The Tivetshall to Harleston railway line opened on December 1, 1855 and that month Charles Dickens published the first instalment of his eleventh novel, Little Dorrit.

Jane Eyre author Charlotte Bronte died at the age of 38 on March 31, 1855, just 18 days before the envelope reached Bungay.

The Bungay envelope was part of an extraordinary collection of Nevis philatelic treasures assembled by Federico Borromeo which sold for £125,935 at the Spink auction.

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