Old public bathing area
Another photo of Long Bridges public bathing area in Oxford. On the right of the photo you can see the steps into the water. (You can see these highlighted if you click through to the photo on Flickr.)
Victorian post boxes
Familiar, but not mundane They are among our most familiar items of street furniture; indeed there are more than 115,000 throughout the UK. Yet how many of us walk past a post box without considering how long it might have been there? Letter boxes have been a feature of our streets since the 1850s, when demand for postal services grew following the introduction of the Penny Post in 1840. The novelist Anthony Trollope is remembered as the Post Office official responsible for recommending the introduction of pillar boxes to allow easier posting of private letters. These were first installed on the Channel Islands in 1852, though were introduced to the mainland the following year. Wall boxes started to appear a few years later. Early boxes were green, but red had become the standard colour by 1879. Here are a selection of boxes, both pillar and wall variety, bearing the VR (Victoria Regina) cipher of Queen Victoria. Enjoy a little slice of everyday Victorian history: Abingdon wall...
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