Framlingham, Suffolk

 

First post

I’d been to Framlingham before, but was not switched on enough to look properly at the post boxes. What a sadly missed opportunity! 

Now, I know that for many people even a slight preoccupation with post boxes is thought to be the preserve of the anorak.* And yet I’d argue (hoping not to get too dull about it) that these small items of street furniture both look good in our towns and villages and provide some insight into social history.

So, in Framlingham the other week, I paused to appreciate one of two such boxes in a very rare early design – octagonal boxes with vertical slits, probably dating to about 1856. This is really early in the history of the post box. When the standard penny post for letters was introduced in 1840, there were no post boxes at all. To post a letter you had to take it to a ‘Receiving Office’ or wait for a man ringing a bell to walk down your street and give your letter to him.

In 1852, the first free-standing post boxes were installed on Jersey; these proved successful and the following year the first of (eventually) thousands of boxes began to be seen on streets on the British mainland. They were all made of cast iron and took a column-like form,† with a vertical slit for the letters. There was no standard design,¶ but this example in Framlingham is one of the earliest still in use. It exhibits many of the features common to later boxes – the initials or cipher of the monarch, a display panel for collection times, a locking door, and so on. It was made by Andrew Handyside, ironfounder of Derby, and probably dates to 1856 or 1857 – Handyside began to produce boxes with horizonal slits in 1857. Horizontal letter slots became the norm, and by 1866 the first national standard box was introduced.

If all this is much too like anorak-speak for you, you’ve probably stopped reading by now. But if you’re still with me you’ll appreciate that such rare early boxes illuminate a bit of postal history and enhance the handful of streets and lanes where they still exist.

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* Informal British English. Anorak: person who has an obsessive interest in something generally thought to be ‘dull and unsociable’ (thanks to Chambers Dictionary for the last phrase).

† Some resembled columns very closely, like the fluted one in Malvern, subject of an earlier post.

¶ To begin with, there was no uniform colour either. Red became the standard hue in 1884.

Rousham, Oxfordshire

 

Dashing for the post

I always make a point of looking at old post boxes. The post (‘snail mail’) has always been a major part of my life. Before email (and its precursor, the fax) I was always always popping round the corner to the local post box, or dashing to the post office to get some urgent missive or piece of text dispatched. So it was not unusual that I paused by this wall box close to the big house at Rousham. A Victorian box, I thought. Nothing unusual about that – there are quite a few of these wall boxes, well over one hundred years old and bearing the ‘VR’ monogram of Queen Victoria, still in use, often in remote locations. But then I looked a little closer and saw that this one was a slightly different design from those I’ve seen before. It’s quite tall in relation to its width and instead of the Queen’s monogram being right at the top, it’s further down, beneath the inscription ‘Post Office’ (at the very top, just about visible) and ‘Letter box’ (just below the slot). In addition, the words ‘Cleared at’ appear below the monogram, acting as a heading to the label below, which gives the times at which the box is emptied. A further touch: the box is topped with a triangular pediment – most wall boxes are simple rectangles.

All this is so much fine detail, which is not interesting to everyone (are you still reading?). But it reminds us that many different designs of post boxes were produced and that preserving such valuable and useful bits of street furniture isn’t simply a matter of counting (‘We have n-hundred Victorian boxes, does it matter if we lose one?’); it’s about checking the details, and making sure we don’t unknowingly let go of something unusual or unique. Looking at images of similar ones online, this one may be a National Standard No 2 Small Wallbox* design, which goes back to about 1859.

Hanging on to this kind of thing is also about respecting the histories of the people and firms that made them. Cast into the metal at the bottom of this box is a manufacturer’s name. Alas I can’t make it out, because it’s encrusted with layers of paint, but the final word is ‘Birmingham’, so that’s where the makers were based. Names associated with this kind of box include the Eagle Foundry and Smith & Hawkes, both of Birmingham. Next time I go to Rousham, I must look again at the name on this box, armed with these names, and see if one of them fits.

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* The very name suggests that it’s one of numerous different designs of large and small wallboxes in use alongside a further variety of free-standing pillar boxes.

Much Wenlock, Shropshire

Made to measure?

Wall boxes are quite a common feature of Britain’s streetscapes. They’ve existed since the 1850s and provided the Post Office with an economical way of providing letter boxes in places where a smaller capacity than that of the familiar free-standing pillar box was sufficient. Country road junctions, small rural Post Offices, and town sites away from the busy centre are all places where one still sees wall boxes, some, like this one in Much Wenlock, survivors from the Victorian period. There are various designs, mostly very simple, featuring the monogram ‘VR’, a lockable door with a plate for displaying collection times, and a slot for the letters. According to Jonathan Glancey,* many Victorian examples have had their slots widened to accommodate the larger envelopes that came in during the 20th century – this one may have a widened slot, although any tell-tale joins have been masked by generations of red gloss paint.

What struck me about this box was the way it’s set into the wall. Rather than being flush with the brickwork in the usual way, it sticks out and is framed by neat, curved bricks. I assume that this is because the wall is not thick enough to fit the full depth of the box, which would stick out into the interior otherwise.† If the building were a Post Office, space might be made inside, but this one isn’t, so the brickwork makes space on this street side. A robust solution, ensure that the people of this part of Wenlock could get their letters in the post with a minimum of effort. And judging by the recent ‘Priority Postbox’ label beneath the slot, presumably they still do.

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* Jonathan Glancey, Pillar Boxes (Chatto and Windus, 1990)

† If anyone knows better, I’d be interested to hear.

Lincoln

First post

Just inside the entrance to the Museum of Lincolnshire Life in Lincoln is this post box. It was made in 1856 at the Handyside foundry in Derby and installed the following year at Gosberton Bank near Spalding. In 1969 is was moved to the museum, as an example of a very early type of post box – from the time before there was an accepted standard design. A number of the early post box designs were octagonal like this one and like the Penfold, of which a number survive. The Lincoln example, ten years earlier than the Penfold, is rarer still and almost as striking.

With its vertical slot and octagonal shape, it looks quite unlike modern cylindrical boxes and as the red finish wash’t standardised until later, it might originally have been a different colour too. But many features – the royal monogram, the panel showing collection times, and the words ‘Post Office’ are all similar to those on the boxes we use today.

I don’t often feature here items from museums, but there are so few opportunities to see these early boxes on the street that I didn’t want to let this one slip by. And there’s a twist. Although it’s in a museum, this post box is still in use, and visitors are encouraged to post their letters in it – this is Lincolnshire’s oldest working post box. As the first post box appeared on the British mainland in 1853,* it is also one of the oldest in the country. Mr Handyside did the Post Office proud.

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*The Channel Islands got them the year before.

Great Brington, Northamptonshire

Hub

In the town where I live (population roughly 6,000) the Post Office has closed and we now have a Post Office counter in the town’s branch of the Co-op. The Co-op staff do very well in the small space allocated to this in my view important function, and they open longer hours than the Post Office did, but it’s still not the same.

How refreshing then, to find small villages where the Post Office still functions. Here’s the Post Office in Great Brington, which seems to be going strong, the archetypal village Post Office with stone walls under, thatched roof, and tiny shop window – presumably it was once a cottage but no matter, its central location is the most important thing. Post Offices are local hubs, places where people meet, talk, exchange news, read notices, and network, and this function is nearly as important as the posting of letters and parcels, and the doing of the many other small financial and administrative tasks that Post Offices still perform, even in their somewhat diminished modern form. Perhaps the fact that a bench has generously been provided on the pavement outside reflects this role of the Post Office as a local centre.

Clearly this Post Office has been doing the business for decades. I found a 1922 photograph of it online, with its Post Office sign up and another sign telling customers that the services on offer then included ‘money orders, savings bank, parcel post, telegraph, insurance and annuity business’. That sign has gone, but the worn wooden Post Office sign, also visible in the 1922 photograph, is still there, faded but just about legible. It’s not exactly essential – the letter box (a George VI era wall box) and red sign above the door tell us where we are. But it is pleasing that it’s still here to remind us of the office’s long history.

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Birthday box

Post boxes: readers who return often to this blog might have noticed that I have bit of a thing about them – I must have done at least half a dozen posts about post boxes over the years. Although they’re not strictly buildings, they’re built structures, and some were designed by architects. And the people who decide which buildings should be listed don’t have any problems with including them: there are quite a few listed boxes.

A number of these are Penfolds, the lovely Victorian hexagonal boxes that celebrate their 150th birthday this year. They’re named for their designer, architect John Wornham Penfold,* and they are rather architectural in character, with the acanthus leaves around the top. They were made between 1866 and 1879 before being superseded by cylindrical boxes that were less costly to manufacture.

Original 1866 Penfolds are quite rare. There are 20 of them in use on Britain’s streets, including a fair number in London and no fewer than 8 in Cheltenham†. So as I live near Cheltenham, it’s a local Penfold I’ve chosen to share with you. It’s rather special in that it still has the original white enamel flap over the slot, chipped and spattered with red paint, but still hanging there, helping to keep out driving rain and autumn leaves.

They weren’t always red, which became the official colour in 1874 (although it took a few years to repaint all the boxes). Before that this Cheltenham box was probably green. Penfolds are certainly effective in glowing Pillar Box Red, and it’s good to find them, showing off their ‘VR’ royal monogram, the bold legend ‘POST OFFICE’, and the lovely acanthus top with its strip of beaded ornament and smart finial. Among the trees, leaves, and miscellaneous and unglamorous street furniture of today, Cheltenham’s Penfolds still stand proudly out.

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* Penfold was a distinguished member of his profession. He became President of the Architectural Association and a Fellow of the RIBA. There’s more about him and his post boxes here. I'm also indebted to an article in NADFAS Review, Autumn 2016, for reminding me about this anniversary.

† The total number of Penfolds in use, both 1866 examples and later ones, is about 70.

Piccadilly, London

Dashing for the post

Facebook reminded me today that one year ago I went to the excellent Ai Weiwei exhibition in London’s Royal Academy, an occasion that not only left me with enduring memories of the art, but also gave me reason to notice the very old telephone box in the entrance to the RA’s building, Burlington House.

Looking back through my pictures, I notice that I also have an image* of the wooden post box under the Burlington House entrance arch.† This is all that remains of the Post Office that was once in a room to one side of the entrance arch. The Post Office closed as long ago as 1940, and this box is a reminder that in the 19th century, post boxes were far from standard in form. Big cast-iron monster boxes, pillar boxes like Doric columns, and the elegant hexagonal Penfold boxes§ were all around in the 19th century, along with various other forms, and some of these old ones have still not been replaced with newer designs, much to our visual benefit. For Burlington House, with its classical forms and intricate Renaissance revival ornament (see the left and right edges of the picture), something still more different was fitting. So this very formal wooden box is complete with classical pediment, in which a carved crown is set amid scrollwork. Beneath, there are two slots, which are now marked ‘Franked Mail’ and ‘Stamped Mail’. Above the plate saying ‘Stamped Mail’ one can just discern part of the word ‘London’ beneath – originally these two slots would have been for letters to London and elsewhere respectively.

I have a hunch, and it’s only that, that the shape of this bespoke wooden box has a practical raison d’être. Not only is it made to fit neatly in the available wall space between the pilasters but it’s also not very deep (and wall-mounted, so that it does not occupy floor space). This is not a wide passage and it can get busy. Plonking a ready-made letterbox here just wouldn’t have been very convenient. Altogether, it’s an elegant solution.

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* My photograph contains a blurred figure walking quickly into the frame. I doubt if this figure is recognisable, but if you do recognise yourself and would rather not have your image online, please contact me using the ‘comment’ button below, and I will remove the picture.

† The sign above the box reminds us that the Linnean Society, Britain’s learned society concerning itself with biological sciences, is based in rooms above the entrance arch to Burlington House.

§ I plan to post more about Penfold boxes soon; 2016 is the year of the Penfold’s 150th anniversary.

Martock, Somerset

Edward, Edward…

The first time I went through Martock, I paused for just long enough to notice the bold black lettering painted around the curving corner of the Post Office. It looked like a nice touch in a small town that seemed proud to have retained this key local service when so many places have lost their Post Offices since email replaced letter-writing for so many people and some of the services provided by Post Offices moved elsewhere or declined in popularity. My eye having been caught by this strong lettering, I started to look at it a little more closely (noticing how that final ‘E’ looks a little cramped, and how the effect varies slightly as you move around and the curve) and then realised I soon needed to be somewhere else. So I took a swift photograph, jumped in the car, and drove away.

Later, looking at the photograph, I kicked myself for not examining more closely the post box to the left of the door. The splash of red with a white plate above told me that it must be a Ludlow – a type of box, distinguished by this white enamelled plate, the lack of a rain hood over the slot, and, if one could see how it’s made inside, a wooden inner body. I’ve noticed Ludlow boxes (named for their manufacturer) before. Months later, I was talking to someone who knew a lot about the history of post boxes and she mentioned this box in Martock as an uncommon example of one made and installed in 1936 with the monogram of King Edward VIII, who was king so briefly that he was not even crowned. When I was passing near Martock more recently, I stopped again and saw that there’s an ‘E R’, in a very curvaceous, ornate letterform. 

But which Edward does this monogram refer to? Now, I’m no expert in the minutiae of post-box design. This ‘E R’ is certainly different from the plainer, more classical one used in connection with a Roman number ‘II’, on the boxes marked with the monogram of the current queen, Elizabeth II. However, the curvy letterform on the Martock box is similar to that on some boxes said to be of the earlier Edward VII period, whereas most Edward VIII pillar boxes have a still more curly E made up of two loops. Online sources seem to disagree about all this. But it’s a charming bit of lettering anyway, and worth a pause. I’m pleased I managed to go back and see it.

Liverpool

The early post

This 1863 Liverpool Special pillar box* at Liverpool's Albert Dock is the survivor of seven that were originally made for the city. It dates to a time when the idea of a standard post box (indeed the idea of a post box tout court) was still quite new. The variety of different designs made since the first boxes appeared in the early 1850s led the Post Office to introduce a standard design – a cylindrical box with a horizontal slot – in 1859. But not everyone liked it and Liverpool's authorities went for their own design. What's now called the Liverpool Special, topped with a crown, was the result.

I've posted this striking box today because the Royal Mail and Historic England† have just announced a new agreement to ensure the protection and preservation of the country's post boxes – there are 115,300 of them – in their existing locations. This comes at a time when postal services are much used (all those packages containing items bought on the internet, all that junk mail), but when the old-fashioned letter post is in decline thanks to the prevalence of email. I'm pleased this initiative is being taken: readers who return regularly to this blog with know of my liking for old boxes – pillar boxes, lamp boxes, Ludlows, and the rest. Let's all resolve to post some letters, so that they're actually used.


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*The image of the Liverpool Special box is from a photograph by Steve Knight.

†Historic England is the public body that looks after England's 'historic environment'.

Potsgrove, Bedfordshire

Out of place?

It has recently been announced that the Royal Mail, the service that delivers letters in the UK, is about to become a private company. This state-owned letter-delivery service can trace its history back 497 years to the reign of Henry VIII, although in its present form it could be said to have had a new beginning in 1840. This was the year when, with the introduction of the penny post and the first pre-paid postage stamps, the service guaranteed to deliver any letter posted to an address in Great Britain for a uniform rate, paid by the sender.

An essential element in the postal system is the mail box, and I've blogged before about some of the various kinds of box found in England, including pillar boxes and wall boxes of various types. Here's another kind, the compact metal container known as a lamp box because it is designed not to be inserted into brickwork, as in my photograph, but attached to a lamp post or telegraph pole by means of  pair of metal loops fixed to the side of the box. Lamp boxes originally had steeply curving metal tops, but this design, with a shallower curve, came in the time of George V and lasted into George VI's reign (1936–52) – the later king's monogram is cast into the front of this example. The gently curving top reminds me slightly of the roof of a telephone box and harks back to the time when telephone and postal services were both run by the same body.

If this lamp box is rather out of place with its side loops removed and set into a brick pillar, it's clearly still doing its job. And how often have I seen the happy blend of a red rural post box and a growth of green ivy working its way around the metal, to be cleared away occasionally but never obliterated? Will the postal service be out of place in the public sector or manage to accommodate itself to the demands of shareholders, pressing around its edges like the invasive ivy around this box? Time will tell.

Shaftesbury, Dorset

Fit for purpose

Post Offices. It is easy to conclude that they’re not what they were. A few decades ago in my local big town, the main post office was housed in a grandiose and spacious former hotel building in the town’s most elegant street. From there it moved to a cramped but serviceable High Street location with shelves for stationery and similar goods at the front, and Post Office counters at the back. From there it has migrated to part of the upper floor in the town’s branch of W H Smith. It’s all rather sad, and reflects the Post Office’s loss of its former grip on our lives.

Back in the 1930s and 1940s, on the other hand, the Post Office was very much at the centre of things, and if an important new Post Office was built, it was likely to be a building of some consequence, probably solid-looking and traditional in appearance, like this example in Shaftesbury. With its stone walls, big gables, mullioned windows, and Tudor-style doorway, it wouldn’t look out of place in a Cotswold town, and it fits in well here too, turning the street corner with some style. It all adds up to the kind of Tudor revival style that, along with neo-Georgian, was popular for Post Offices in the interwar years. This one was built, so a plaque on the wall tells us, in 1946, so it’s very much harking back to the time before World War II. This was still a time when a lot of thought went into the design and functioning of Post Offices. Julian Stray, in his useful Shire book, Post Offices, quotes Lord Gerald Wellesley writing in the Architectural Review, around this period, telling his readers what a Post Office should be like:

A Post Office must be in a prominent position. It should look dignified and permanent, and should, as far as possible, harmonize with its surroundings…the public office, which should, of course, be of a size adequate to the number frequenting it, should, in the larger instances, have doors giving on to the streets at both ends…must be very well lit, and this may mean windows on the ground floor which ideally speaking, are disproportionately large compared with those in the upstairs offices. A clock and prominently displayed letter-box are also features of a Post Office front.

The Shaftesbury office ticks nearly all of Wellesley’s boxes. It is on the site of the Angel Inn, which was the home of the town’s first postmaster in the 1660s. Early post offices were often in inns, which could easily accommodate horses and carts delivering mail. Today this Post Office today is kitted out with a red oval sign and one of those brown metal built-in post boxes, helpfully labelled “POSTING BOX” in elegant capital letters. High on the wall, more capitals tell us that this was both a Post Office and Savings Bank. Ah, of course. Banks. It is easy to conclude that they’re not what they were…

Upton on Severn, Worcestershire

A Ludlow in Worcestershire

The previous post about pillar boxes seemed to attract a lot of interest, so, although I’ve not managed to pass an Edward VIII post box recently, here’s a letter box with the monogram of his brother, George VI.

There have been wall boxes, post boxes set into the walls of Post Offices or into all kinds of other walls in the countryside, since Victorian times, and I don’t normally give them too much attention. But this one caught my eye because of the unusual enamel plate. Jonathan Glancey’s good little book Pillar Boxes (1989) tells me that this is what’s known as a Ludlow box, manufactured by James Ludlow of Birmingham, a company that supplied non-standard wall boxes from the late-19th century until the firm closed in 1965. Their boxes have a white enamel plate and no rain hood over the letter slot. The body of the box is not cast iron, like most post boxes, but is made of wood with a covering of sheet metal.

Perhaps the lighter body and the tendency for the enamel plates to come away from the front have made Ludlow boxes slightly less durable than their cast-iron counterparts. But it was good to find this one, still accepting mail and still catching the eye with its businesslike enamel panel.

Great Malvern, Worcestershire

Pillar of the community

I’m always on the lookout for interesting street furniture (although I’m not sure I like the term) – horse troughs, drinking fountains, benches, bollards, and pillar boxes. Maybe they’re not quite buildings, but many early pillar boxes are certainly miniature works of architecture, none more so than the kind, now very rare, that are actually made in the form of a pillar.

The idea of making post boxes in the form of fluted Doric columns seems to have begun in 1856, just three years after Britain’s first post box was installed. At this time there was no single standard design, and post-box pioneers were trying out different ideas. The Doric boxes were cast at Smith and Hawk’s Eagle Foundry in Birmingham, and were apparently designed by an architect called Edge. The first kind was in the form of a fluted column topped by a substantial bell-shaped dome on which was a large crown; the whole thing was about 8 feet tall. None of these monsters survive on our streets, but a few of the smaller models with the shallow domed top, like my example from a street in Malvern, can still be found. And very satisfying it is too, with its cast lettering, fluted body, and solid moulded base.

People who know about these things will have noticed one more unusual feature of this particular Victorian pillar box. It has a horizontal letter slot, like most modern post boxes but unlike most of the surviving Doric boxes, which have vertical slots. So the design of this box looks both back and forward, as well as making a cheering red splash on this quiet, rubble-walled street corner.

Rous Lench, Worcestershire

An unusual post

I had been meaning for a while to do a post about post boxes and was on the look out for some early hexagonal pillar boxes when I came across this, a village post box set in its own little building. It was built because Rous Lench is the Victorian estate village par excellence.

Rous Lench was held by the Rous family, and then the Rouse Boughtons, from 1382 to 1876. It was the last of the local Rouse Boughtons, Sir Charles Henry Rouse Boughton, who improved the village with a magnificent Gothic school and village hall, plus various cottages. Then in 1876 he sold out to the improbably named Rev W K W Chafy Chafy, who made further improvements. The letter box by the village green, set in sandstone with a timber-framed gable and, I think, the Chafy coat of arms, is one of his felicities. What a telling reminder, in these days of the email and the tweet, of the importance of letters and their housing. Rev Chafy’s letterbox is truly an asset amongst the hedges, evergreens, and honeysuckle of this verdant Worcestershire village.