The event with the Letterbox

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The Development of the Letterbox
In the pre-post box era, there were two main methods for delivering correspondence; senders can be necessitated to bring their mail with a Receiving House, or would await the Bellman. The latter would patrol the streets, collecting post in the community. In order to distinguish himself, and to make his presence known, the Bellman has on a uniform and ring a bell.
It is at 1852 the suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, with a trial proposed to the Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were installed on Jersey to try out the modern system.
The success of the experiment led to an additional four being attached to Guernsey, one of these now forms part from the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing about the mainland by 1853.
However, there was up to now no universal pillar box design in which we're currently familiar. Design and manufacture was with the discretion of local authorities, and it is at 1859 that attempts were built to standardise the structures.
Horizontal slits took over as the favoured option over vertical ones, and became the norm in letterbox design. Further improvements upon the initial included the addition in the protruding cap to shield the contents from your elements.
As of 1859, the lamp ended up being be around in 2 sizes; a bigger and wider size for highly populated areas, plus a smaller version for elsewhere. However, the Australian made security letterboxes standardised pillar boxes didn't receive universal acclaim. It was up against the backdrop of these criticism the Liverpool Special was formulated.
This prompted the Post Office (opened in 1861) to generate another standard letter box in 1866. Again, this was not a huge success and thus, an extra design were only available in 1879. This final design is the one in which we have been used to today. It was a couple of years prior to this the iconic red colour with the post boxes became a standard feature.
Before this time around, the most preferred colour option was green in order to blend in while using green British pastures. However, after a barrage of complaints that this structures were to challenging to locate because of the camouflage, it absolutely was agreed that bright red was the best choice. The programme of re-painting lasted for about 10 years.
For the people most importantly, the introduction and refinement of letter boxes enhanced the ability for sending and receiving mail effortlessly. With the exception of oversized parcel delivery, people were afforded access with a delivery service nothing you've seen prior witnessed in Great Britain.