Bath Postal Museum has reopened at new premises below the city’s main post office following a complete revamp.

The museum now tells the story of 4,000 years of communications through interactive and audiovisual displays.

The interactive displays include a board game based on the realities of mail coach travel and a perforating machine so that visitors to create their own commemorative stamps plus an audio point describing the significance of the various post horn tunes.

A new exhibit called Room of Firsts features rare items connected with Bath’s postal heritage. These include the Bath Penny Black; the only existing copy of Ralph Allen’s mail contract to create the first network of cross-county postal roads, so that long distance mail no longer had to be delivered via London; and a post card flown 100 miles from a Bath airfield in 1912 to London – the first time that mail had been sent so far by air.

New exhibits include a wall of Victorian Red and Green post boxes and stamp machines; a dial-a-memory of retired postal workers relating anecdotes about their working lives; a collectors’ corner about the world of stamp collecting and a touch screen where actor Richard Briers relates the history of communications.

The museum also features a period Victorian post office set-piece complete with actors in character who describe their duties and portraits of two 18th century Bathonians which come to life and recount how they revolutionised the early postal service.

UK designers Imagemakers led the redevelopment.

The Heritage Lottery Fund granted £228,000 towards the project, which was matched by Bath and North East Somerset Council. Details: www.bathpostalmuseum.org

Photograph: A portrait of John Palmer, who set up the mail coach system, which comes to life played by actor Mark McGann