The event in the Letterbox

The event in the Letterbox

Blog Article

The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there are two main ways of delivering correspondence; senders could be necessitated to get their mail to some Receiving House, or would await the Bellman. The latter would patrol the streets, collecting post through the community. In order to distinguish himself, and also to make his presence known, the Bellman might wear a uniform and ring a bell.
It was at 1852 that the 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 resulted in 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 as of 1853.
However, there is to date no universal pillar box design that were currently familiar. Design and manufacture was with the discretion of local authorities, and it was in 1859 that attempts were designed to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits took over as favoured option over vertical ones, and took over as the norm in letterbox design. Further improvements upon the main included the addition in the protruding cap to shield the contents through 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 standardised pillar boxes didn't receive universal acclaim. It was from the backdrop of such criticism that this 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 that we are acquainted with today. It was a couple of years just before this that the iconic red colour with the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before this time around, the most well-liked colour option was green as a way to blend in with all the green British pastures. However, after a barrage of complaints that this structures were to tough to locate this can camouflage, it had been agreed that bright red was the best here option. The programme of re-painting lasted for 10 years.
For the people most importantly, 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 to some delivery service no time before witnessed in Great Britain.