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 for easier posting of private letters. These were first installed on the Channel Islands in 1852, and 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.

Scroll down for a selection of boxes, of both the pillar and wall variety, from the Victorian era, all bearing the VR (Victoria Regina) cipher. One of this selection is green, though not because this was the original colour.  Enjoy a little slice of everyday Victorian history

Abingdon wall box (Conduit Road):


Abingdon wall box (St Helen's Wharf):


Appleton, Oxfordshire wall box:


Bangor (Wales) pillar box:


Great Yarmouth pillar box:


Hickling wall box:


Kilrea wall box:


Little Wittenham wall box:



Oxford, Longwall Street wall box:


Oxford (Merton Street) wall box:


Rye wall box:

Brownsea Island wall box:

Sligo town wall box:

Culham wall box:

A pillar box on George Street, Oxford has disappeared since this photograph was taken on 2 Dec 2021:

Pillar box in Castlegate, York

Post boxes did exist before the introduction of boxes bearing royal ciphers, though in very limited numbers. Here's a wooden wall box example from an old post office in Coombe Street, Lyme Regis:

There are still more than 2000 Victorian post boxes in the UK. Even rarer are the handful of Edward VIII post boxes from his curtailed reign. The next time you walk past a post box, take a second look to see just how long it might have been there...

Further reading

See this blog post by historianruby for an excellent brief guide to the royal ciphers on post boxes.

There are many different styles of letter box. The Letter Box Study Group is the place to start!

Got a favourite old post box? Let us know the location in the comments below.

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