How to tell how old a pillar box is. Until the 1980's both the telephone and the postal service came under the control of the General Post Office. Post boxes older than 1980 will often have the words Post Office rather than Royal Mail as seen on modern post boxes. The Royal Cipher (Monarch's symbols or motif ). This is a great example of a George VI post box the customer decided on having it painted black and it looks. I love this original ER pillar box i just.
Red Pillar Post Box
The pillar box was introduced to Britain in 1854 in the Channel Islands on the recommendation of Anthony Trollope. Originally painted sage green, it was not until 1874 that they were painted the familiar red.
Trollope is credited with the introduction of the pillar box to Britain. The idea had been considered before, but Trollope’s report on postal services in the Channel Islands included a recommendation to try pillar boxes out in St Helier, Jersey and was approved. Pillar boxes were introduced to the Channel Islands in 1854 and a year later in mainland Britain. London got its first pillar boxes in 1855, there were initially only five; Fleet Street, The Strand, Pall Mall, Picadilly and Rutland Gate (Kensington). They were rectangular, sage green and with a large ball on top. It was not until 1874 that they were painted the familiar red. Pillar boxes gave people the freedom of private correspondence. Young women particularly were able for the first time to send letters freely, without being subject to a trip to a Post Office. Not all people liked or trusted the iron stumps. Aunt Stanbury in He Knew He Was Right was extremely distrustful of any modern innovation, pillar boxes included.
Miss Stanbury carried her letter all the way to the chief post-office in the city, having no faith whatever in those little subsidiary receiving houses which are established in different parts of the city. As for the iron pillar boxes which had been erected of late years for the receipt of letters, one of which–a most hateful thing to her–stood almost close to her own hall door, she had not the faintest belief that any letter put into one of them would ever reach its destination. She could not understand why people should not walk with their letters to a respectable post-office instead of chucking them into an iron stump as she called it out in the middle of the street with nobody to look after it. Positive orders had been given that no letter from her house should ever be put into the iron post.
For more information on the history of the postbox and postal services in Britain, visit The British Postal Museum & Archive website
LANGUAGE AND SPEECH EXERCISES
Ex. 1. Define the following words and phrases. Use them in the sentences of your own
2nd class post, post box, outgoing mail, postal codes, postage entry slot, out-of-town, pillar post boxes, ornate, mount, volume, private letter box, clogged, TOC, telegraph poles, install, postal service, retrieval, ludlow wall box, drab, forcible, identifiable, overflowing, hexagonal, sorters, slant. letter, post card, mail, post office box, stamp, deliver mail, address, return address, zip code, insurance, printed matter, personal mail, postal money order, air mail, sea mail, mailman, postal clerk, picture post card, postage, mailbox, stamp machine.
Ex. 2. Mark the following statements as true or false
1. A drop box and a collection box are the other names for a post box.
2. Letters and telegrams can be dropped in a post box at the post office.
3. There is only one standard type of the post boxes all round the world.
4. First post boxes appeared in England.
5. Post boxes in England are red.
Brick Pillar Post Box
6. First post boxes in Asia were made of wood.
7. Modern American post boxes are green.
8. There are different types of post boxes for different types of correspondence.
9. A rounded, slanted top or a down turned entry slot is used to protect mail only from rain or snow.
10. Time when the post box is emptied is kept in secret to avoid acts of vandalism.