The event of the Letterbox

The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there are two main ways of delivering correspondence; senders could be necessitated to take their mail to some Receiving House, or would await the Bellman. The latter would patrol the streets, collecting post through the community. In order to distinguish himself, and to make his presence known, the Bellman has on a uniform and ring a bell.
It was at 1852 that this suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, having a trial proposed for your Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were installed on Jersey to test out the newest system.
The success in the experiment led to yet another four being set up on Guernsey, one of which now forms part from the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing about the mainland since 1853.
However, there was as yet no universal pillar box design with which we're currently familiar. Design and manufacture was on the discretion of local authorities, plus it what food was in 1859 that attempts were created to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits became the favoured option over vertical ones, and had become the norm in letterbox design. Further improvements upon the initial included the addition from the protruding cap to shield the contents in the elements.
As of 1859, this area would have been to be around by 50 percent sizes; a bigger and wider size for highly populated areas, along with a smaller version for elsewhere. However, the standardised pillar boxes didn't receive universal acclaim. It was from the backdrop of such criticism that the 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 thus, a further design were only available in 1879. This final design will be the one with which we are acquainted with today. It was a couple of years ahead of this the iconic red colour in the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before now, the most well-liked colour option was green in order to blend in with all the 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 option. The programme of re-painting lasted for 10 years.
For the people most read more importantly, 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 some delivery service no time before witnessed in Great Britain.