Box 500 as a naval postal address
I am a new member, and this is my first post. I have reached a dead end in my research on the wartime experience of Barbara Pym, the novelist. She was based on the south coast pre- Normandy landings as a 3/O WRNS censor officer. She lived at HMS Mastadon, Exbury House in normal times. However, I found the address she used confusing. The envelope with her address is in the Bodleian library, copyright holder Tom Holt. She gives her address as Box 500, Southampton. That does not look like a normal naval postal address. Box 500 was the designation for the Security Service, MI5. Can anyone help, please?
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Well, Claire, I don’t know about ‘help’, but you’re welcome to what few thoughts I have. Exbury House, a few kms SE of Beaulieu in Hampshire was indeed HMS Mastodon – in commission 6.5.42 – 6.7.45. One unpublished source I have lists it as a landing craft training base. The June 1944 Navy List shows her as an acting 3rd Officer on the books of HMS Mastodon, with seniority of 11th March 1944. Given the activities you describe (as reported in https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/may/01/author-barbara-pym-may-worked-mi5-research-suggests ) then her apparent affiliation to MI5 (ie the Box 500 address) seems quite plausible. It begs the question, perhaps, of how to reconcile her position in the WRNS with her MI5 postal address. I see she is not listed in the February 1944 Navy List. Given her appointment wef March 1944, presumably she was placed in (or seconded to?) the WRNS at that time (ie the build-up to D-Day) with the express purpose of scrutinising seamen’s mail, looking for the malpractices you describe. If that is classifiable as intelligence work (I think I would classify it as such), then that seems likely to explain her apparent connection to MI5.
I see that she was posted to HMS Byrsa, the Naval HQ in Naples, wef January 1945. Just out of interest, do you have any insight as to her duties there? Just curious.
All the best
Nick