The Development in the Letterbox

The Development in the Letterbox

Blog Article

The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there are two main means of delivering correspondence; senders will be necessitated to create 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 might wear a uniform and sounds familiar.
It was in 1852 that this suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, using a trial proposed for the Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were set up on Jersey to try out the modern system.
The success from the experiment led to yet another four being installed on Guernsey, one ofthese now forms part in the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing around the mainland since 1853.
However, there is confirmed no universal pillar box design with which we're currently familiar. Design and manufacture was on the discretion of local authorities, and yes it is at 1859 that attempts were built to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits became the favoured option over vertical ones, and became the norm in letterbox design. Further improvements upon the initial included the addition with the protruding cap to shield the contents from your elements.
As of 1859, the lamp 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 would not receive universal acclaim. It was up against the backdrop of which 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 thus, a further design were only available in 1879. This final design could be the one that we are accustomed to 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 as a way to blend in with all the green British pastures. However, after a barrage of complaints how the structures were to hard to locate because of the camouflage, it had been agreed that bright red was the most suitable choice. The programme of website 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 nothing you've seen prior witnessed in Great Britain.