The event of the Letterbox

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The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there are two main strategies to delivering correspondence; senders would be necessitated to create their mail to some Receiving House, or would await the Bellman. The latter would patrol the streets, collecting post from your community. In order to distinguish himself, and make his presence known, the Bellman might wear a uniform and ring a bell.
It is at 1852 how the suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, using a trial proposed for the Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were placed on Jersey to test out the brand new system.
The success from the experiment resulted in one more four being set up on Guernsey, one of which now forms part in the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing around the mainland by 1853.
However, there was clearly to date no universal pillar box design that were currently familiar. Design and manufacture was with the discretion of local authorities, and it was at 1859 that attempts were made to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits took over as the favoured option over vertical ones, and took over as 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 lamp ended up being be for sale by 50 % sizes; a larger and wider size for highly populated areas, along with a smaller version for elsewhere. However, the standardised pillar boxes failed to receive universal acclaim. It was against 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, it was not only a huge success and thus, another design came in 1879. This final design is the one with which we have been acquainted with today. It was two years before this that this iconic red colour with the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before on this occasion, the preferred colour option was green as a way to blend in while using green British pastures. However, after a barrage of complaints the structures were to challenging to locate because of their camouflage, it had been more info agreed that bright red was your best option. The programme of re-painting lasted for approximately decade.
For the people at large, the introduction and refinement of letter boxes enhanced the ability for sending and receiving mail easily. With the exception of oversized parcel delivery, people were afforded access with a delivery service never before witnessed in Great Britain.