Pillar Boxes

Last week, as I was looking up some vocabulary from the text ‘muscle binds’, I came across the words ‘pillar box’. It really surprised me to find it referred to an object so representative of the British culture. A pillar box is a free-standing post box. The most typical ones are the tube shaped ones, but other shapes, such as hexagonal, rectangular or oval ones, have also been used. The first four British pillar boxes were introduced as an experiment in St Helier, on the island of Jersey, in 1852.Its use was recommended by Anthony Trollope, the English novelist, who was then employed by the Post Office. At this time many boxes were painted a dark green, but from 1874, all boxes were painted bright red in order to increase their visibility and prevent people from bumping into them! This is where ‘Pillar- box red’ (used both as a noun and an adjective) comes from.

On every post box in the UK, the Royal Cipher can be seen of the reigning monarch at the time of the installation. It is made up of the first name of the King or Queen together with the letter R which stands for Regina (Queen) or Rex (King). In Scotland, however, boxes feature only the Scottish Crown, as a means of preserving national identity. Boxes made between 1879 and 1887 bear no royal cipher or crown, only the maker’s name, and for this reason they are called ‘Anonymous’ boxes. Between 1930 and 1938, blue boxes for airmail correspondence were installed in London and then extended to the cities of Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow.

There are more than 150 varieties of pillar boxes, though some of them have not survived the passage of time .Nowadays it is estimated there are over 100,000 of them in the United Kingdom.