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Prior to the setting up of the Office of Controller of Telegraph Stores in 1877, the purchase of postal and postal telegraph stores was the responsibility of the Chief Clerk of the Post Office and the Engineer-in-Chief. In 1901 a committee of enquiry into the organisation and working of the Department of Telegraph Stores suggested that consideration should be given to the amalgamation of the postal and telegraph stores departments, and this took place in 1902. At this same time an independent Factories Department was formed. A further change took place in 1941 with the setting up of a separate Contracts Department. The Stores Department later became known as the Post Office Supplies Department. This department provided both postal and telecommunication stores until the separation of the businesses into the Post Office, dealing purely with postal matters, and British Telecom dealing with the telecommunication business in the 1980s.

This class contains specimens of the engineering rate book and vocabulary of engineering stores; a number of descriptive booklets on the work of the department together with various committee, annual and other reports.

The Supplies Department was based at Mount Pleasant, London, with other premises situated in Studd Street London N1, Wembley, Bridgewater Somerset, Birmingham and Edinburgh, and with a number of satellite units supplying the most frequently requisitioned items to their local areas. A separate clothing store existed at Hook in Hampshire. The London operations and work from the Bridgewater depot was relocated to new purpose built premises at Swindon in 1975. This new office and warehouse complex was designed to use modern storage and handling methods including high level storage racking, conveyors, fork lift and pallet trucks. It handles all the requirements for stores from offices in England, and it also handles requests for general publicity items, the distribution of telephone directories, (carried out under a contract on behalf of British Telecom), and requests for uniforms from offices in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Other items for offices in Scotland and Northern Ireland are supplied from the Edinburgh site.