THE LETTER BOX

I sit here and write this, yet unintentionally it was never meant as a blog. It was to be a story about a letter box, but history over ruled a fictional story being written. Perhaps that story may happen in the future. I'm not even sure now what provoked the thought of letter/post boxes, perhaps the guy unsuccessfully trying to post a parcel through the letter this afternoon, and then ringing the door bell to hand deliver it. Anyway enough of me waffling, let's get down to business. 

In 1840 Uniform Penny Post was launched marking a revolution in the way the postal system could be used. Rowland Hill’s postal reforms made way for the postal system to almost every person in Britain. Use of the system grew rapidly, as a result the earlier systems for collecting, sorting and delivering letters had to change. One such change was in the means of people posting letters.Before the Road-Side Letter Boxes there was mainly two ways of posting a letter. Senders would either have to take the letter in person to a Receiving House (effectively an early Post Office) or have to await the Bellman. The Bellman wore a uniform and walked the streets collecting letters from the public, ringing a bell to attract attention.

The first free-standing post boxes, later known as pillar boxes, were introduced in the UK in 1852 in St Helier, Jersey, under the recommendation of Anthony Trollope, a Post Office Surveyor in the Channel Islands. And not all are red like the United Kingdom, remember the golden ones painted for the 2012 London Olympics, and some remain so.

Now a days, you'll be be hard pressed not to find a Letter Box anywhere in the vicinity of your home address. In fact there is a letter box right now not to far from you are. A letter box, A mail box, A post box; all have the same purpose, to post and deliver. A box attached to an outside wall, or a slot in the door of a building.

The earliest boxes on Jersey were red, however a change was made in 1859 when the colour for all post boxes was standardised as green. Today the colour of British letter boxes is as much part of the iconic nature of the box as any other feature. The early green painted boxes were unobtrusive, excessively so. Complaints were received by people having difficulty finding them and a return to red was specified in 1874. It took 10 years to complete the programme of re-painting. Red remained the standard colour for boxes. There have been a few exceptions to the

Now a days, you'll be be hard pressed not to find a Letter Box anywhere in the vicinity of your home address. In fact there is a letter box right now not to far from you are. A letter box, A mail box, A post box; all have the same purpose, to post and deliver. A box attached to an outside wall, or a slot in the door of a building.

Sadly these days letter boxes are loosing there charm, people don't write letters to each other as much as they used to. House letter boxes tend just to be for that junk mail we never asked for or posting a set of keys through; even those brown envelopes are getting less and less.

But they stand there ground, some literally like on street corners and you'll be hard pressed to find a front door without. Now a day's they are more likely to be classed as door furniture, in metal, plastic, UPVC. Whatever the style or materials they still all do the same job. I'm sure if ever day came when letters where made obsolete post boxes on doors and street corners would remain for aesthetic purposes in the name of art.


Prolific Visable Writer