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In the pre-post box era, there are two main strategies to delivering correspondence; senders can be necessitated to bring 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, also to make his presence known, the Bellman might wear a uniform and sounds familiar.

It was in 1852 that this suggestion of road-side boxes finally became a reality, which has a trial proposed for that Channel Islands. Three cast-iron pillar boxes were attached to Jersey to test out the new system.

The success from the experiment resulted in yet another four being placed on Guernsey, one ofthese now forms part in the British Postal Museum & Archive collection. Letter boxes then began appearing for the mainland at the time of 1853.

However, there was clearly confirmed mid-century letterbox with which we’re currently familiar. Design and manufacture was at the discretion of local authorities, and it is at 1859 that attempts were built to standardise the structures.

Horizontal slits took over as favoured option over vertical ones, and took over as norm in letterbox design. Further improvements upon the initial included the addition from the protruding cap to shield the contents through the elements.

As of 1859, the box ended up being be available by 50 % sizes; a bigger and wider size for highly populated areas, plus a smaller version for elsewhere. However, the standardised pillar boxes did not receive universal acclaim. It was against the backdrop of such criticism the Liverpool Special was formulated.

This prompted the Post Office (opened in 1861) to create another standard letter box in 1866. Again, it was not really a huge success and thus, an extra design arrived 1879. This final design is the one that were used to today. It was 2 years prior to this the iconic red colour in the post boxes became a standard feature.

Before on this occasion, the most preferred colour option was green in order to blend in with all the green British pastures. However, following a barrage of complaints how the structures were to challenging to locate because of the camouflage, it had been 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 to a delivery service never before witnessed in Great Britain.