The Development in the Letterbox

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The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there was two main ways of delivering correspondence; senders could be necessitated to get their mail with a Receiving House, or would await the Bellman. The latter would patrol the streets, collecting post from the community. In order to distinguish himself, also to make his presence known, the Bellman would wear a uniform and sounds familiar.
It what food was in 1852 that the suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, which has a trial proposed for your Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were installed on Jersey to understand the brand new system.
The success of 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 by 1853.
However, there was clearly to date no universal pillar box design in which were currently familiar. Design and manufacture was at the discretion of local authorities, also it is at 1859 that attempts were built to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits took over as the favoured option over vertical ones, and took over as 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 box ended up being to be accessible in 2 sizes; a bigger and wider size for highly populated areas, along with a smaller version for elsewhere. However, the standardised pillar boxes did not receive universal acclaim. It was against the backdrop of such criticism that this 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 were only available in 1879. This final design will be the one with which were acquainted with today. It was 24 months before this the iconic red colour of the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before on this occasion, the most preferred colour option was green in order to blend in while using green British pastures. However, following a barrage of complaints that this structures were to tough to locate this can camouflage, it had been agreed that bright red was the best more info option. The programme of re-painting lasted for 10 years.
For the populace most importantly, the introduction and refinement of letter boxes enhanced the capacity for sending and receiving mail easily. With the exception of oversized parcel delivery, individuals were afforded access to a delivery service nothing you've seen prior witnessed in Great Britain.