Campaigners went on the march to send a final defiant message to post office bosses considering closing their local branch.

Elderly residents from the Redhill area of Hereford were among the last of tens of thousands across the country who have taken to the streets to save their local post office.

They had until midnight last night to let post office bosses know why they should keep open their branch, one of 20 in Herefordshire under threat of closure.

But the midnight deadline also marked the end of the consultation period for all 42 "area plans" designed to axe 2,500 branches from the Post Office's already 14,000-strong network.

The plans have proved controversial and over the past few months the Post Office have received 165,000 official submissions believed to represent over 1 million people angry about losing their local branches. Most protests have fallen on deaf ears and by the end of last week just 414 of the 2,360 branches nationally facing the axe had been spared, with most already shutting up shop altogether.

Most will remain shut but more than 100 councils are watching the success of Essex council which used £1.5 million of council tax money to reopen 15 of their closed branches to see if the plan works. Herefordshire is among the last in the country to face the wave of closures and locals were not going to let the last day of the six week public consultation pass without making their feelings known to a wider audience.

Villagers in the rural north have been hit hardest and MP Bill Wiggin has told post office bosses they must scale back their plans to shut or scale down 13 in his constituency. Seven branches in the south of the county are under threat but Redhill residents are amongst the most vocal and they have been fighting for weeks to save the branch which serves a large, elderly community in Hereford city.

Liberal Democrat election hopeful Sarah Carr, said: "It is idiotic to be thinking of closing post offices in our county at a time when so many of our public services are under threat from this 'closure culture' that seems to exist."