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?

Pillar 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. Early boxes were green, but red had become the standard colour by 1879.

Here are a selection of boxes bearing the VR cipher of Queen Victoria, a little slice of everyday Victorian history.

Abingdon (Conduit Road):


Abingdon (St Helen's Wharf):


Appleton:


Bangor (Wales):


Great Yarmouth:


Hickling:


Kilrea:


Little Wittenham:



Oxford (Longwall Street):


Oxford (Merton Street):


Rye:

Brownsea Island:

Sligo town:

Culham:

Post boxes did exist before the introduction of the pillar box, though in very limited numbers. Here's an example from Lyme Regis:

Further reading

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

Thanks for reading!

Do you enjoy photography? You can earn money from your pictures by signing up as a Shutterstock contributor.