Introduction

When I started getting interested in the Squared Circle Postmarks I went looking for books or publications that would give me overall information for all the countries of the world that had been using this type of postmark. I found out that while the information is quite abundant for some countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Jamaica or Italy, for others the information was scarce or nonexistent.

The only world-wide publication I am aware of is the booklet “Squared Circle Postmarks Used Outside Great Britain” published by the Great Britain & Commonwealth Philatelic Society (Switzerland) but, while this is the most valuable publication existing on this subject with a lot of extremely useful information, also this one is not complete and does not include many countries, particularly those outside the Commonwealth.

As most publications are available only in English I noticed that my fellow Italian collectors had even greater difficulty collecting information on the Squared Circle Postmarks. I initially decided to start preparing a world-wide summary for my own personal use, but I soon realized that my list is expanding every day with new findings and new information provided by other collectors and I need to share it with all those with the same passion to make it better and also to make it available to those who are supplying me with new information. So I finally decided to open a website on this subject which would summarize all the information collected until now on the Squared Circle Postmarks and would be continuously updated with new findings.

Of course I also decided to publish it both in English and Italian to offer some support to my Italian fellow collectors, who don’t speak English. I will be grateful to anybody who can make additional contributions with information on additional countries or postmarks, to make this list even more updated and complete.

General Information

The Squared Circle Postmark is basically formed by combining two pieces of a cancel. It is a circular cancel with a city or country name and possibly also date information, completed with a series of external bars on the four corners to form an external square frame.

As anything else connected to Postal services, the first postmarks of this type were introduced in Great Britain at the end of 1879 as an alternative to the duplex cancels which were quite larger and apparently more difficult to use. Furthermore the idea behind this new postmark was that the combination of a circular postmark with the corner bars would allow to better cancel all stamps affixed on the letter. The Circle Squared Postmarks were very popular until 1910 but then their usage started to decline as new simpler cancels became available. In general they had virtually disappeared by 1930 (with some exceptions that I will mention later on)

This postmark was mostly used in Great Britain and in the Commonwealth Countries but was later introduced also in other countries like the Dutch Colonies, Italy (probably the highest number of different postmarks per country), Spain, China, Brasil, Hawaii etc.

During their existence they were modified many times so it is possible to find up to 10 different postmarks for the same post office. In particular those of small towns and remote post offices can be quite rare.