The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there were two main means of delivering correspondence; senders will be necessitated to create 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 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 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 as of 1853.
However, there is to date no universal pillar box design in which were currently familiar. Design and manufacture was at the discretion of local authorities, and it is at 1859 that attempts were designed to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits took over as the favoured option over vertical ones, and took over as 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, and a smaller version for elsewhere. However, the standardised pillar boxes did 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 generate another standard letter box in 1866. Again, this was not only a huge success therefore, an additional design arrived 1879. This final design is the one in which we're accustomed to today. It was two years ahead of this that the iconic red colour in the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before now, the most well-liked colour option was green in order to blend in with all the green British pastures. However, following 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 option. The programme of re-painting lasted for 10 years.
For the people most importantly, the introduction and refinement of letter boxes enhanced the capacity for sending and receiving mail easily. With the exception of oversized parcel check here delivery, people were afforded access to some delivery service no time before witnessed in Great Britain.