The Development on the Letterbox

The Development on the Letterbox

Blog Article

The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there were two main strategies to delivering correspondence; 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 in the community. In order to distinguish himself, and to make his presence known, the Bellman has on a uniform and sounds familiar.
It was in 1852 that this suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, having a trial proposed for the Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were set up on Jersey to test out the modern system.
The success from the experiment generated yet another four being installed on Guernsey, one of these now forms part in the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing around the mainland since 1853.
However, there is to date no universal pillar box design with which we're currently familiar. Design and manufacture was on the discretion of local authorities, and yes it was in 1859 that attempts were built to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits took over as the favoured option over vertical ones, and had become the norm in letterbox design. Further improvements upon the first included the addition with the protruding cap to shield the contents through the elements.
As of 1859, the box ended up being to be around by 50 percent sizes; a more substantial and wider size for highly populated areas, plus a smaller version for elsewhere. However, the standardised pillar boxes failed to receive universal acclaim. It was up against the backdrop of which criticism how the Liverpool Special was formulated.
This prompted the Post Office (opened in 1861) to make 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 that we are acquainted with today. It was a couple of years just before this that the iconic red colour in the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before this time around, the most well-liked colour option was green in order to here 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 about 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, people were afforded access to some delivery service no time before witnessed in Great Britain.