The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there were two main ways of delivering correspondence; senders could be necessitated to bring their mail to your 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 what food was in 1852 how the suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, with a trial proposed for your Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were placed on Jersey to understand the brand new system.
The success in the experiment triggered an additional four being placed on Guernsey, info now forms part from the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing about the mainland at the time of 1853.
However, there were as yet no universal pillar box design that were currently familiar. Design and manufacture was at the discretion of local authorities, also it was at 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 would have been to be around by 50 % sizes; a bigger 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 from the backdrop for these criticism that this Liverpool Special was formulated.
This prompted the Post Office (opened in 1861) to create another standard letter box in 1866. Again, this is not only a huge success and thus, another design were only available in 1879. This final design may be the one that were accustomed to today. It was 24 months ahead of this that this iconic red colour of the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before this time around, the most preferred colour option was green as a way to blend in while using green British pastures. However, after a barrage of complaints the structures more info were to tough to locate because of their camouflage, it had been agreed that bright red was the best choice. The programme of re-painting lasted for as much as decade.
For the population at large, the introduction and refinement of letter boxes enhanced the capacity for sending and receiving mail effortlessly. With the exception of oversized parcel delivery, people were afforded access to some delivery service nothing you've seen prior witnessed in Great Britain.