The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there were two main ways of delivering correspondence; senders will be necessitated to create their mail to a 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 might wear a uniform and sounds familiar.
It is at 1852 that this suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, having a trial proposed for the Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were set up on Jersey to test out the modern system.
The success with the experiment generated one more four being installed on Guernsey, one ofthese now forms part of the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing about the mainland by 1853.
However, there were up to now no universal pillar box design in which we're currently familiar. Design and manufacture was with the discretion of local authorities, also it what food was in 1859 that attempts were made 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 of the protruding cap to shield the contents from your elements.
As of 1859, the box would have been to be accessible by 50 percent sizes; a greater and wider size for highly populated areas, and a smaller version for elsewhere. However, the standardised pillar boxes did not receive universal acclaim. It was from the backdrop for these criticism how the Liverpool Special was formulated.
This prompted the Post Office (opened in 1861) to generate another standard letter box in 1866. Again, this became not really a huge success and thus, another design started in 1879. This final design will be the one in which we have been used to today. It was a couple of years ahead of this how the iconic red colour with the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before now, preferred colour option was green as a way to blend in while using green British pastures. However, from a barrage of complaints that this structures were to hard to locate due to their camouflage, it was agreed that bright red was the best option. The programme of re-painting lasted for about ten years.
For the people in particular, the introduction and refinement of letter boxes enhanced the ability check here for sending and receiving mail without difficulty. With the exception of oversized parcel delivery, people were afforded access to a delivery service never before witnessed in Great Britain.