Pillar box

For a method of preserving the original aspect ratio in films, see Pillarbox. For the type of military bunker, see Pillbox.

1856 type PB1/viii at the West Gate, Warwick

A pillar box is a free-standing post box. They are found in the United Kingdom and in most former nations of the British Empire, members of the Commonwealth of Nations and British overseas territories, such as Australia, Cyprus, India, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, the Republic of Ireland, Malta and New Zealand. Pillar boxes were provided in territories administered by the United Kingdom, such as Mandatory Palestine, and territories with Agency postal services provided by the British Post Office such as Bahrain, Dubai, Kuwait and Morocco. The United Kingdom also exported pillar boxes to countries that ran their own postal services, such as Argentina, Portugal and Uruguay.

Mail is deposited in pillar boxes to be collected by the Royal Mail, An Post or the appropriate postal operator and forwarded to the addressee. The boxes have been in use since 1852, just twelve years after the introduction of the first adhesive postage stamps and uniform penny post.

Mail may also be deposited in lamp boxes or wall boxes that serve the same purpose as pillar boxes but are attached to a post or set into a wall. According to the Letter Box Study Group, there are more than 150 recognised designs and varieties of pillar boxes and wall boxes, not all of which have known surviving examples. Royal Mail estimates there are over 100,000 post boxes in the United Kingdom.

Construction

Cast iron cap of a PB42/1 sits atop the box and is secured by bolts

This rare Edward VIII pillar box door shows the built-in posting aperture, collection plate and the Royal cypher

Most traditional British pillar boxes produced after 1905 are made of cast iron and are cylindrical. Other shapes have been used: the hexagonal Penfolds, rectangular boxes that have not proved to be popular, and an oval shape that is used mainly for the large "double aperture" boxes most often seen in large cities like London and Dublin. In recent years boxes manufactured in glass-fibre or acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic have been produced that do not follow these general outlines. These are for use in secure indoor locations such as supermarkets.

Cast iron pillar box construction comprises three distinct main parts:

The cap sits on top of the Carcass and is usually bolted down from inside. Some designs after 1965 do not have a separate cap. Caps can also be fitted with a separate bracket, normally of cast iron, which supports a Post Office Direction sign (POD) indicating the nearest Post Office.

The door contains the aperture or posting slot. It is hinged, should display the Royal Cypher of the reigning monarch and may also be fitted with a collection plate showing the times of collection from that location. It is fitted with a brass security lock on the inside. The contractor for these locks has been the Chubb Locks company for many years. They are 5 lever locks and each one can exhibit more than 6500 combinations. There is no skeleton key for these locks. Each post box has its own set of keys and postal workers have to carry large bunches with them when clearing the boxes.

The carcass or body of the box that supports the door and cap, and may protrude substantially down below ground level. This provides security and stability to the pillar box. There is a wirework cage inside to prevent mail falling out when the door is opened, a hinged letter chute to allow mail to fall into the collecting bag or sack and a serrated hand-guard to prevent unauthorised tampering with the mail through the aperture.

History

Pre-history

Before the introduction of pillar boxes, in the UK, it was customary to take outgoing mail to the nearest letter receiving house or post office. Such houses were usually coaching inns or turnpike houses where the Royal Mail coach would stop to pick up and set down mails and passengers. People took their letters, in person, to the receiver, or postmaster, purchased a stamp (after 1840) and handed over the letter.

The Channel Island problem

This VR box in Guernsey is the oldest box in use in the British Isles

The advent of the British wayside letter box can be traced to Sir Rowland Hill, Secretary of the Post Office, and his Surveyor for the Western District, and noted novelist, Anthony Trollope. Hill sent Trollope to the Channel Islands to ascertain what could be done about the problem of collecting the mail on a pair of islands. The problems identified in the Channel Islands were caused by the irregular sailing times of the Royal Mail packet boats serving the islands due to weather and tides.

Trollope subsequently arrived in Jersey in the early Spring of 1852 and proceeded to survey both islands. His recommendation back to Hill was to employ a device he may have seen in use in Paris: a “letter-receiving pillar”. It was to be made of cast iron, about 1.5 metres high, octagonal in design and painted olive green. Trollope estimated that four would be needed for Guernsey and five for Jersey. The foundry of Vaudin & Son in Jersey was commissioned to produce them and the first four were erected in David Place, New Street, Cheapside and St Clement's Road in Saint Helier and brought into public use on 23 November 1852. Guernsey received its first three pillar boxes on 8 February 1853.

They were an instant success, despite some obvious problems with rainwater ingress. One Vaudin box still stands in Union Street, Saint Peter Port, Guernsey whilst another is in the British Postal Museum & Archive collection in London.

The first UK and Isle of Wight boxes

File:1st UK Box.JPG

Early UK John Butt box type PB1/1 in Haverfordwest Town Museum

Preserved Ashworth early Irish pillar box at the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.

The very first boxes erected in the UK are not recorded, but the designs varied from area to area as each District Surveyor issued their own specifications and tendered to their own chosen foundries. The earliest ones were essentially experimental, including octagonal pillars or fluted columns, vertical slits instead of horizontal ones, and other unusual features.

It is recorded in the Post Office archives that the first box in the UK was erected in Botchergate, Carlisle in 1853. This fact is commemorated today with a replica Penfold box, located between the Market Cross and the Old Town Hall, in Carlisle city centre. The first six in London were installed on 11 April 1855. The earliest surviving UK designs are four Butt boxes made in Gloucester for the Western Area. These are at Barnes Cross, near Sherborne, Dorset, inside the former Britannia Royal Naval Hospital in Plymouth, in the Haverfordwest town museum (formerly at Merlin's Bridge) and in the British Postal Museum & Archive store at Debden (formerly at Ventnor railway station, Isle of Wight). All date from 1853–59, with Barnes Cross being one of the later batch. The oldest pillar boxes still in use by the Royal Mail are at Framlingham in Suffolk. This pair were founded by Andrew Handyside and Company of Derby in 1856. They are at Double Street and College Road. A third octagonal pillar of this type was at Gobweston in Lincolnshire and is now in the Museum of Lincolnshire Life in Lincoln. 1856 also saw various designs introduced in Scotland and the Midlands. The postbox believed to be the oldest in Scotland, is a wall box which sits on the front of the Golspie Inn - Formerly Sutherland Arms Hotel. It carries the Royal Cypher of Queen Victoria and dates back to 1861.

Design problems

The first design for London, by Grissel & Son of Hoxton Ironworks was rather stubby and rectangular, although surmounted by a decorative ball. Erected in 1855, they were replaced because people complained that they were ugly. One survived and was earmarked for preservation in the early part of the 20th century. It was unfortunately stored in a contractor's yard in London which was subject to a direct hit from a German bomb during the Blitz, thus destroying forever some important boxes. A photograph of this Grissel box together with a Giant Fluted box and a Penfold in the contractor's yard appeared in The Letter Box by Jean Young Farrugia.

Moving towards a standard design

Standardisation of sorts came in 1857 with the deliberations of the Committee for Science & Art of the House of Lords. The Committee designed a very ornate box festooned with Grecian style-decoration but, in a major oversight, devoid of any posting aperture, which meant they were hewn out of the cast iron locally, destroying the aesthetic of the box. Fifty were made for London and the big cities and three survive. One is in Salford Museum, Greater Manchester and the other two are at the BPMA in London. A similar, much simplified version has survived painted green by An Post at the Cork Kent railway station, Ireland. Also to be found only in Ireland is one of the early boxes, now at the AN POST exhibit on the history of the Irish Postal service in the General Post Office, O'Connel Street, Dublin. It is the sole surviving "Ashworth" box of 1855 for the Northern District, that included all of the island of Ireland.

Prior to 1859 there was no standard colour, although there is evidence that the lettering and Royal Cypher were sometimes picked out in gold. In 1859, a bronze green colour became standard until 1874. Initially it was thought that the green colour would be unobtrusive. Too unobtrusive, as it turned out — people kept walking into them. Red became the standard colour in 1874, although ten more years elapsed before every box in the UK had been repainted.

First National Standard boxes

Liverpool Special at Albert Dock

First National Standard (small size), formerly at Sandown Rd, Liverpool

Top of First National Standard in Montpelier Road, Brighton

The first real standard design came in 1859 with the First National Standard box. These were also cast in two sizes for the first time to allow for heavier usage in big metropolitan areas. A number have survived across the UK, including Aberdeen, Brighton, Stoke, Worthing, London, World's End Hambledon, Bristol, Congresbury, and Newport, Isle of Wight. Similar boxes have also survived in Mauritius. In the busy city of Liverpool, even these boxes could not provide the capacity and security required, so a special design was commissioned from the foundry of Cochrane Grove & Co of Dudley. Known as "Liverpool Specials", three survive from a batch of six. Two of these are in Liverpool and the other is in the BPMA collection in London. Cochrane became the foundry that made all the Penfold boxes from 1866 to 1879.

Penfolds

The most famous of the early designs is that named after the architect who designed it, John Penfold. Penfold boxes come in three sizes and altogether there are nine different types. They are very widespread, with the biggest accumulations in London and Cheltenham. Others are spread across England, Ireland, India (including locally made copies), British Guyana, Australia and New Zealand. An export order from the postal service of the Republic of Uruguay resulted in nine boxes of the Penfold design being exported there in 1879, of which six are believed extant, including one in the philatelic department of the central Post Office in Montevideo. In 1993 the Correo Uruguayo commemorated Penfold post boxes with a set of stamps of various denominations.

There are no original Penfolds in Scotland, but 1989-built replicas have been erected in these areas, as well as other deserving sites where they are suitable. The first replica Penfold was erected at Tower Bridge, in London, on the south embankment and carries a commemorative plaque. Genuine Penfolds can be seen at the British Postal Museum & Archive Museum Store in Debden, Essex, The Farm Museum in Normanby by Scunthorpe, the National Railway Museum at York, Beamish Open Air Museum, the Black Country Museum, Crich National Tramway Museum, Oakham Treasures, near Bristol (see link below), Carshalton Beeches in Surrey, The Isle of Wight Postal Museum near Newport, Isle of Wight and Bygones Museum in Basingstoke, whilst the Severn Valley Railway, Blists Hill Victorian Town and the Talyllyn Railway have replica Penfolds. Penfolds, distinguished by their hexagonal construction and Acanthus bud surmounting the cap, were originally exclusively city-based, but have now been installed rural areas as well. About 300 were made, of which 150 survive. Nearly 100 replicas, made at the end of the 1980s, have also been installed.

The New Zealand boxes are the only Penfolds to bear the cypher of King Edward VII; all others in the former British controlled territories have the cypher of Queen Victoria. Penfold boxes in Uruguay bear the national coat of arms of Uruguay and are painted either yellow or black with a yellow band. Boxes made in Madras, India for the kingdom of Travancore carry that kingdom's emblem of a stylised Turbinella pyrum seashell. The Acanthus bud and leaves decoration on the top of Penfold boxes was also emulated in a design of cylindrical post boxes for New Zealand and Australia.

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  Penfold Type PB8/1 at King's Parade, Cambridge.
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  Replica Penfold, erected at Tower Bridge in 1989.
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  Disused green Penfold PB8/1 outside Brecon Museum, Wales.
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  Original bronze-green livery Penfold on High St Rochester, Kent showing enamel Letters flap.
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  Queen Victoria Coat of Arms details from Penfold at the former Neyland Railway Station, Wales.
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  Penfold box at Buxton, Derbyshire, England.
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  Edward VII Penfold PB8 in Dunedin, New Zealand
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  Pillar box in Perumbavoor, Kerala, made in Madras for the Indian kingdom of Travancore

Anonymous boxes

Spiked top Anonymous high aperture type VR box in Priory Road, Cambridge

A return to cylindrical boxes followed with the so-called Anonymous boxes of 1879. Andrew Handyside of Derby was the foundry, but omitted the Royal cypher and the words "Post Office" leading to the Anonymous soubriquet. It took 13 years before this change was reversed, even though the box had undergone a major design change during that time. This involved lowering the position of the aperture relative to the top of the box. The original "High Aperture" design was prone to mail becoming caught under the rim of the cap. This was solved by lowering the aperture so that it falls centrally between the two raised beading lines. Consequently the second style is known as "Low Aperture".

The Portuguese post office adopted the original high-aperture design, which were made for it by Andrew Handyside & Co. Portugal later adopted its own modified design based on Types A and B. Numerous examples of each design remain in use.

Late 19th and early 20th century boxes

Edward VII box with aperture on door, post 1905, fitted with telephone direction sign

New post box designs were ordered in 1887 for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. For the first time there was a lamp-post mounted letter box for use in London squares, but which soon established themselves in rural areas (see lamp boxes). For the big cities, a double-aperture oval-shaped pillar (designated Type C) was introduced, partly to increase capacity and certainly in London, to allow mail to be pre-sorted by region, normally with apertures marked separately for "London" and "Country". All pillar and lamp boxes now had the distinctive Imperial cypher of Victoria Regina, whilst the wall-mounted boxes continued to show only a block cypher VR. The new pillar box design saw out the reign and remained little changed until 1905, when the basic design was refined.

The Edward VII boxes now had the posting aperture as part of the door, rather than the body of the box. That eliminated the chance for mail to get caught up in the top of the box. This basic design remains the same today, having served well throughout the reigns of George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II.

An experiment of 1932 was the addition of a stamp vending machine to the end of the post box. This necessitated an oval planform for the box even though it was only provided with a single posting aperture. At one end of the oval is the stamp machine and at the other is the posting aperture. The boxes have two doors; one for clearance of mail and one for emptying the cash and reloading the stamp machines. The machines were set to vend two halfpenny stamps in exchange for one old penny, the stamps being supplied in a long continuously wound roll known as a coil. Boxes were again made in two sizes, designated Type D and Type E, and carried raised lettering on the castings indicating the position of the stamp vending machine, as well as an array of small enamel plates warning users of the danger of bent coins and the need to wait for stamps to be issued before inserting more money. Several of each have survived in use in England and in the Isle of Man.

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  Type B 'Anonymous' pillar box in Buxton, Derbyshire, England.
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  VR Type B pillar box in Hull.
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  VR pillar box in Oxford, cast by A. Handyside.
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  Edward VII pillar box in front of a K6 Telephone box.
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  Father and daughter pair: George VI and Elizabeth II pillar boxes at Bembridge Post Office Isle of Wight. One was for local mail and the other for off-island post.
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  PB27/1 pillar of George V, fitted with a Post Office Direction Sign (POD) at the Colne Valley Postal History Museum, Essex
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  1932 Type E pillar box with integral stamp vending machine at Ealing Village
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  Rare Edward VIII Type 'A' pillar box in Ramsgate, Kent, England.

Air mail

A rare Air Mail box in original colour scheme, now at the Isle of Wight Postal Museum

Commercial Air Mail service commenced in the United Kingdom in 1919. By the early 1930s Imperial Airways operating regular airmail services to Europe and the British colonies and dominions. To facilitate easy collection of air mail and its speedy onward transmission, a fleet of special vehicles and dedicated postboxes were introduced. To distinguish them from regular post boxes, they were painted Air Force blue, with prominent royal blue signage. The service ran successfully until the outbreak of war in 1939, when it was suspended. Although Air Mail re-commenced after the War, the postboxes and vehicles were no longer identifiable, as Air Mail could now be posted anywhere.

Ireland

Repaired door on green 1887 VR Jubilee box in Kilkenny, Ireland

Following Irish independence in 1922, existing British pillar boxes were retained, and simply painted green. Many of these are extant around the country, retaining the monogram of the monarch who reigned at the time of the box's installation. The Department of Posts and Telegraphs continued installing similar pillar boxes and wall boxes, but with the initials SÉ (for Saorstát Éireann), a harp or the P & T logo, instead of a monarch's monogram. Since 1984 An Post, the current Irish postal administration, use the An Post logo to adorn their posting boxes.

During 1939 a number of bombs were put in post boxes by the IRA as part of their S-Plan campaign.

Queen Elizabeth II

The next major design change came in 1968 with the introduction of the Type F pillar box. This was conceived by Vandyke Engineering and proposed to the Post Office as a cheaper alternative to the traditional cast box. It was fabricated in sheet steel with welded construction. Unfortunately, the British climate did not suit the use of galvanised steel (a problem often seen with the 1940 and 1988 pattern of lamp box) and the Vandyke pillars soon began to rust badly. The very last one was removed from service at Colmore Row in Birmingham in 2002.

In 1974 the Post Office experimented with a similar rectangular design known as Type G. This was made in traditional cast iron by the foundry of Carron Company in Stirling, Scotland. It was an operational success, but the public disliked the "square" designs and petitioned the Post Office for a return to cylindrical boxes.

The Post Office commissioned a new design of pillar box in 1980 from a panel of three competing designers. The competition was won by Tony Gibbs and his design, which was thought to be ultra-modern at the time, was designated Type K by the Post Office. Made in traditional cast iron, it stayed in production until 2000. Notable features included: replaceable lifting ring screwed into the dome of the box, body and roof of box cast as one piece, large easy-to-read collection time plate, all surface details and collection plate window recessed to give a perfect cylindrical outline, integral restrictor plate, know colloquially as a "Belfast Flap" to restrict posting to letters only and a flanged shallow base suitable for installation in modern buildings, shopping centres and other urban areas. These boxes were thus much easier to move and handle as they could be rolled over level ground or lifted by crane into position. The design had one major flaw in the area of the door hinge, which is prone to snap under stress and the K type pillar boxes are no longer being installed.

All new pillar boxes for use in the UK are Type A traditional pillars or Type C oval pillars from the foundry of Machan Engineering, Denny, Falkirk, Scotland. Exceptions to this are the Supermarket or "Inside" boxes supplied by Broadwater Mouldings Ltd of Eye, Suffolk and the sheet steel "Garage" boxes supplied directly by Romec Ltd.

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  EIIR Type B pillar box in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
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  Elizabeth II Type B pillar box (Nigerian pattern) in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, England.
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  Modern Royal Mail branded EiiR Type C double aperture pillar box, Menai Bridge.
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  Type K pillar box of Elizabeth II fitted with a "Post Office Direction" sign
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  Unusual bracket carrying a Post Office "Lozenge" fitted to a Type K pillar at Easter Compton, S. Gloucs
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  A rare double Type F pillar box by Vandyke Engineering (1968) at the BPMA Store, Debden, Essex.
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  Type G (square) pillar box in Cambridge
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  A prototype Post Office Suite by Ideo Design from 1989, now in the BPMA store, London
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  A glass-fibre pillar box of the type frequently seen in British supermarkets, made by Broadwater Mouldings Ltd of Eye, Suffolk.
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  Box at Terminal 5, Heathrow Airport. The transparent panel allows visual inspection of the contents, for security purposes.
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  Installing a used Type K in Swindon

Scotland

Stylised version of the Crown of Scotland, part of the Scottish Regalia

In Scotland there were protests when the first boxes made in the reign of Elizabeth II were produced. These bore the cypher "E II R" but there were objections because Queen Elizabeth is the first Queen of Scotland and of the United Kingdom to bear that name, Elizabeth I having been Queen of England only. After several EiiR pillar boxes were blown up by improvised explosive devices, the General Post Office (as it was at that time) replaced them with ones which only bore the Crown of Scotland and no Royal cypher. Red telephone boxes or kiosks of type K6 were also treated in the same way.

Olympic gold

Main article 2012 Olympics gold post boxes in the United Kingdom

For the 2012 Summer Olympics, a pillar box in each of the British gold medalists' home towns was painted gold to celebrate their success. This example is a rare Type D pillar at Onchan, Isle of Man.

To mark the 2012 Summer Olympics, Royal Mail, Isle of Man Post and Guernsey Post painted a pillar box gold in the home town of each Great Britain team member who won a gold medal, as well as a demonstration model near Westminster Abbey. A website mapping the gold boxes was provided. The boxes, originally intended to be repainted to the traditional red in due course, will remain gold painted permanently.

Overseas

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  Pillar box in Buenos Aires, Argentina
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  Australian-made Edward VII pillar box at the Western Australian Rail Transport Museum, Bassendean
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  Pillar boxes in Cyprus were painted yellow after independence, and are still in use
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  George V pillar box in Gibraltar
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  A Guernsey Post Elizabeth II Type C double pillar box
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  Colonial-era post box in Hong Kong, a Scottish Crown Type C in Central
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  Pillar box in Shimla, India, of a design pioneered by Suttie & Co of Greenock, Scotland
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  Last red pillar box in Al Ahmadi, Kuwait, about 1976
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  Macanese pillar box from the Portuguese colonial era in the Museum of Macau
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  A red pillar box in Vittoriosa, Malta. Shortly after independence, royal cyphers were ground off the pillar boxes in Valletta and Floriana, but most others remained intact.
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  Early pillar box in Thames, New Zealand
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  Elizabeth II pillar box in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
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  British postboxes in old Tel Aviv, Israel, are a remnant of the Palestine Mandate. The British royal cyphers were ground off the cast-iron doors after the Israeli war of independence
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  British-made "high-aperture" box in Sintra, Portugal
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  Two variations of Portuguese pillar boxes in Porto, Portugal
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  Replica Penfold in Singapore for collecting special Christmas post
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  Post box in Spain

Clearance

Collection of British pillar boxes at the Inkpen Post Box Museum, near Taunton, Somerset – since moved to Oakham Treasures, Gordano, Bristol, UK

Post boxes are emptied ("cleared") at times usually listed on the box in a TOC, Times of Collection, plate affixed to the box.

Since 2005, most British post boxes have had the time of only the last collection of the day listed on the box, with no indication of whether the box is cleared at other times earlier in the day. The reason given for this by the Royal Mail is that they needed to increase the font size of the wording on the "plate" listing the collection times to improve legibility for those with poor sight and that consequently there was insufficient room for listing all collection times throughout the day. The "Next Collection" tablet, where fitted, was usually retained in these cases, but tablets now merely show the day of the week, indicating whether or not the last collection has been cleared that day.

Popular culture

Music

British songwriting duo Flanders and Swann included a song, "Pillar to Post" on their album And Then We Wrote (1975).

Films

In The Beatles' film Help! (1965), a member of the cult tries to obtain the ring while hiding in a pillar box.

Two Walt Disney films set in London feature a very accurate wooden prop pillar box of the Penfold type. It appears in several scenes of Mary Poppins (1964) and in the Portobello Market scene of Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).

In the John Wayne crime action film, Brannigan (1975), a blind ransom drop is made into a London pillar box. The extortionists have installed a hatch at the bottom of the pillar box, to allow them to access the pillar box from the sewer and switch the ransom with worthless newspaper for the police to follow.

Television

Mr Neutron, the penultimate episode of the fourth series of the BBC Television show Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), features GPO officials opening a long line of pillar boxes that starts in the Ruislip suburb of London, goes on to encircle the Gobi Desert and leads the GPO to World domination.

The 1980s and 90s British animated cartoon series Danger Mouse featured the title character and his assistant living in a red pillar box in London. The sidekick is named Penfold, supposedly an intentional reference, though the pillar box did not resemble the Penfold hexagonal type.

Strip cartoons

In 1999 McDonald's Restaurants issued a promotional toy featuring British DC Thomson comic strip cartoon character Roger the Dodger hiding inside a red pillar box.

Another DC Thomson character, Desperate Dan, has been shown posting a letter in a pillar box, although his comic strip is set in the American frontier, and pillar boxes were not used in the USA.

See also

• Lamp box
• Ludlow wall box
• Wall box
• 2012 Olympics gold post boxes in the United Kingdom

References and sources

References

Sources

• Farrugia, Jean Young (1969). The Letter Box: a history of Post Office pillar and wall boxes. Fontwell: Centaur Press. ISBN 0-900000-14-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Proud, Edward B. (1991). The Postal History of British Air Mails. Heathfield: Proud-Bailey Co. Ltd. ISBN 1-872465-72-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Reynolds, Mairead (1983). A History of The Irish Post Office. Dublin: MacDonnell Whyte. ISBN 0-9502619-7-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Robinson, Martin (2000). Old Letter Boxes. Princes Risborough: Shire Publications. ISBN 0-7478-0446-X. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Warren, Brian; Williams, Chris (2000). Republic of Ireland Letter Box Listing. Letter Box Study Group. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wilmut, Roger, ed. (1989). The Complete Monty Pythin's Flying Circus: All the Words. Vol. 2. New York City: Pantheon Books. pp. 311–326. ISBN 0-679-72648-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Millar, Hayley. "Stamp of approval for postboxes". BBC News.
• British Postal Museum & Archive
• Letter Boxes British Postal Museum & Archive article
• Letter Box Study Group