The event with the Letterbox

The event with the Letterbox

Blog Article

The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there was two main ways of delivering a letter; senders will be necessitated to take their mail with a Receiving House, or would await the Bellman. The latter would patrol the streets, collecting post through the community. In order to distinguish himself, and make his presence known, the Bellman might wear a uniform and ring a bell.
It was in 1852 the suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, which has a trial proposed for your Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were installed on Jersey to test out the brand new system.
The success from the experiment resulted in one more four being placed on Guernsey, one ofthese now forms part of the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing around the mainland at the time of 1853.
However, there were confirmed no universal pillar box design with which we're currently familiar. Design and manufacture was in the discretion of local authorities, plus it was at 1859 that attempts were created to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits became 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, this area would have been to be around by 50 percent 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 website 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 really a huge success and so, an extra design were only available in 1879. This final design will be the one with which were used to today. It was 24 months prior to this that this iconic red colour from the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before this time, preferred colour option was green so that you can blend in with the green British pastures. However, after having a barrage of complaints that the structures were to challenging to locate because of their camouflage, it turned out agreed that bright red was the best choice. The programme of re-painting lasted for approximately a decade.
For the population in particular, the introduction and refinement of letter boxes enhanced the ability for sending and receiving mail with ease. With the exception of oversized parcel delivery, everyone was afforded access to your delivery service never before witnessed in Great Britain.