The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there was two main ways of delivering correspondence; senders would be necessitated to take their mail to your Receiving House, or would await the Bellman. The latter would patrol the streets, collecting post from your community. In order to distinguish himself, and also to make his presence known, the Bellman dons a uniform and sounds familiar.
It is at 1852 that the suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, using a trial proposed for your Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were placed on Jersey to test out the modern system.
The success of the experiment led to an additional four being attached to Guernsey, one of these now forms part in the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing on the mainland by 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, 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 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 for sale 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 contrary to the backdrop of these criticism the Liverpool Special was formulated.
This prompted the Post Office (opened in 1861) to create another standard letter box in 1866. Again, this was not only a huge success therefore, an additional design came in 1879. This final design is the one in which we're accustomed click here to today. It was two years ahead of this 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 while using 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 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 to some delivery service no time before witnessed in Great Britain.