The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there were two main ways of delivering correspondence; senders could be necessitated to get 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 to make his presence known, the Bellman has on a uniform and sound familiar.
It is at 1852 how the suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, which has a trial proposed for that Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were attached to Jersey to understand the new system.
The success from the experiment triggered a different four being installed on Guernsey, one of these now forms part with the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing for the mainland since 1853.
However, there was up to now no universal pillar box design that we're currently familiar. Design and manufacture was on the discretion of local authorities, plus it was at 1859 that attempts were created 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 lamp was to be for sale by 50 % sizes; a greater 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 from the backdrop of these criticism that the 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 so, an extra design started in 1879. This final design may be the one in which we have been familiar with today. It was two years ahead of this that the iconic red colour in the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before this time around, the preferred colour option was green as a way to blend in using the green British pastures. However, from a barrage of complaints the structures website were to challenging to locate because of their camouflage, it turned out agreed that bright red was your best option. The programme of re-painting lasted for as much as ten years.
For the people most importantly, the introduction and refinement of letter boxes enhanced the capacity 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.