The event from the Letterbox

The event from the Letterbox

Blog Article

The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there was two main ways of delivering instructions; senders can be necessitated to take 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 this suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, having a trial proposed for your Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were installed on Jersey to try out the newest system.
The success of the experiment resulted in yet another four being set up on Guernsey, one of which now forms part from the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing about the mainland as of 1853.
However, there was 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 main included the addition with the protruding cap to shield the contents from the elements.
As of 1859, the lamp ended up being be available in two sizes; a greater and wider size for highly populated areas, as well as a here smaller version for elsewhere. However, the standardised pillar boxes would not receive universal acclaim. It was against the backdrop of such criticism that this Liverpool Special was formulated.
This prompted the Post Office (opened in 1861) to make another standard letter box in 1866. Again, this is not a huge success and so, an extra 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 in order 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 your best option. The programme of re-painting lasted for as much as 10 years.
For the 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 no time before witnessed in Great Britain.