The event on the Letterbox

The event on the Letterbox

Blog Article

The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there was two main strategies to delivering instructions; senders would be necessitated to take their mail to a Receiving House, or would await the Bellman. The latter would patrol the streets, collecting post from your community. In order to distinguish himself, and to make his presence known, the Bellman has on a uniform and ring a bell.
It was at 1852 that this suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, having a trial proposed to the Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were installed on Jersey to try out the modern system.
The success of the experiment triggered a different four being installed on Guernsey, one of these now forms part with the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing for the mainland by 1853.
However, there was clearly to date no universal pillar box design in which we are currently familiar. Design and manufacture was at the discretion of local authorities, also it is at 1859 that attempts were built to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits took over as the favoured option over vertical ones, and became the norm in letterbox design. Further improvements upon the original included the addition of the protruding cap to shield the contents from the elements.
As of 1859, the box ended up being to be accessible in 2 sizes; a bigger and wider size for highly populated areas, along with a smaller version for elsewhere. However, the more info standardised pillar boxes didn't receive universal acclaim. It was from the backdrop of such criticism that the Liverpool Special was formulated.
This prompted the Post Office (opened in 1861) to generate another standard letter box in 1866. Again, this is not just a huge success and thus, a further design were only available in 1879. This final design will be the one with which we are acquainted with today. It was a couple of years just before this that this iconic red colour with the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before this time around, the preferred colour option was green as a way to blend in using the green British pastures. However, from a barrage of complaints how the structures were to hard to locate because of the camouflage, it was agreed that bright red was the best option. The programme of re-painting lasted for as much as ten years.
For people at large, the introduction and refinement of letter boxes enhanced the capability for sending and receiving mail without difficulty. With the exception of oversized parcel delivery, people were afforded access with a delivery service never before witnessed in Great Britain.