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Wednesday 10 July 2013

Post Office Letter Boxes and Pillar Boxes

The Daily Mail yesterday (9 Jul) printed an article about the British Postal Museum which is apparently near to London's King's Cross Station, though few people know of its existence. Anthony Trollope the novelist, who was employed as a postal surveyor first trialled pillar boxes in Jersey before introducing them to mainland Britain and in the Channel Islands Jersey Post and Guernsey Post are now independent postal services. The pillar and letter boxes still use the mainland's traditional design and whilst Jersey's are the traditional red colour those in Guernsey are blue (with one exception). On recent visits to Guernsey I've photographed some of these and these are shown below.
This is the only pillar box in Guernsey that isn't blue. It's in Union Street, St Peter Port and is the oldest letter box still in use in the British Isles, dating from 1853.



This is another Victorian pillar box, of the more modern design, in Trinity Square, St Peter Port

A Victorian wall mounted letter box

A wall mounted letter box from the reign of King Edward VII

A George V wall mounted letter box. Interestingly there's no 'V' to indicate that it's King George the Fifth, presumably because there was no national postal service during the reigns of the first four King Georges, so there wouldn't have been any confusion about to which of the Georges it related. If that's the case though, why did the ones for Edward VII have a 'VII'?

I didn't come across any King George VI boxes but this one for Queen Elizabeth II is, I think, at L'Erée on the west coast of Guernsey.

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