The event of the Letterbox

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The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there was two main strategies to delivering instructions; senders would 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 make his presence known, the Bellman would wear a uniform and sounds familiar.
It what food was in 1852 how the suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, which has a trial proposed to the Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were placed on Jersey to try out the modern system.
The success from the experiment resulted in an additional four being placed on Guernsey, info now forms part from 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 we are currently familiar. Design and manufacture was at the discretion of local authorities, and it was in 1859 that attempts were made to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits became the favoured option over vertical ones, and took over as the norm in letterbox design. Further improvements upon the initial included the addition in the protruding cap to shield the contents from the elements.
As of 1859, the therapy lamp ended up being be accessible in two sizes; a more substantial and wider size for highly populated areas, and a smaller version for elsewhere. However, the standardised pillar boxes didn't receive universal acclaim. It was against the backdrop of such criticism how the Liverpool Special was formulated.
This prompted the Post Office (opened in 1861) to produce another standard letter box in 1866. Again, this was not really a huge success so, a further design were only available in 1879. This final design will be the one in which were accustomed to today. It was 24 months prior to this that the iconic red colour in the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before on this occasion, the preferred colour option was green as a way to blend in with all the green British pastures. However, following a barrage of complaints that this structures were to difficult to locate because of the camouflage, it had been agreed that bright red was the most suitable choice. The programme of read more re-painting lasted for approximately a decade.
For people in particular, the introduction and refinement of letter boxes enhanced the capability for sending and receiving mail without difficulty. With the exception of oversized parcel delivery, people were afforded access to your delivery service no time before witnessed in Great Britain.