By Rafe Calder
The pillar box is the plainest object in the street. It holds letters. It has done so, in some form, since the middle of the nineteenth century, and the reason it exists at all is that the post in the Channel Islands was not collected well.
We read three sources: Wikipedia, the history page of a pillar-box heritage website, and a community history wiki about Jersey. They agree on the outline. They differ on dates, makers, numbers and one colour, and we show the differences.
The surveyor
Wikipedia says Anthony Trollope, then Surveyor for the Western District, was sent by Rowland Hill to the Channel Islands to look at problems with collecting the mail. The Jersey wiki says he went in 1851 and that his report proposed roadside letter boxes for St Helier. The heritage website says he recommended a “letter-receiving pillar”, a design he may have seen in Paris. We note that “may have” is the website’s own hedge.
Wikipedia describes the boxes he recommended as cast-iron pillars about 1.5 metres high, octagonal, and painted olive green. He estimated four were needed for Guernsey and five for Jersey, according to Wikipedia and the heritage website.
The first boxes
Wikipedia says the maker was Vaudin & Son in Jersey and that the first four came into public use in Saint Helier on 23 November 1852. The Jersey wiki gives the same date and adds detail: the sites were David Place, New Street, Cheapside and St Clement’s Road, and John Vaudin, a blacksmith, supplied the pedestals and boxes, which were cast at a foundry in Bath Street, St Helier. The heritage website gives a looser date: the first was erected in October 1852.
Guernsey followed. Wikipedia says its first three boxes went into use on 8 February 1853.
The mainland
Wikipedia and the heritage website both say the first box on the mainland went up in Botchergate, Carlisle, in 1853. Wikipedia adds that the first six in London were installed on 11 April 1855.
The heritage website explains why early mainland boxes varied. Each District Surveyor set a specification and chose a foundry, so designs differed from district to district. It names Butt boxes from Gloucester, dated 1853 to 1859, as the earliest surviving mainland boxes.
Green, then red
Wikipedia says there was no standard colour before 1859, that bronze green was standard from 1859 to 1874, and that red became the standard in 1874, though it took another ten years for every box in the UK to be repainted. The heritage website says the original box was painted olive green, and does not mention a national standard in 1859. It dates the first national standard box to 1861 and says it was cast in two sizes. It adds that 1859 refers to a later batch of Butt boxes.
So the two pages describe the same decade in different words. Our reading: before the standard designs, “the pillar box” was a local invention, and the national colour came last.
The Penfold
Wikipedia says the Penfold, named after the architect John Penfold, is hexagonal with an acanthus bud on the cap, that there are nine types in three sizes, and that Cochrane Grove & Co made all Penfolds from 1866 to 1879. Both Wikipedia and the heritage website say about 300 were made and about 150 survive.
Ciphers
The letters on the front name the monarch. Wikipedia says VR stands for Victoria Regina, EIIR for Elizabeth II, and CR III for King Charles III, whose first box was unveiled on 12 July 2024 in Great Cambourne. In Scotland, Wikipedia says, boxes made after a controversy in 1953 over the Elizabeth II cipher carry the Crown of Scotland and no royal cipher.
The square box
Wikipedia says the Carron Company, near Falkirk, made the rectangular Type G in cast iron in 1974. It worked, but the public disliked the shape. The heritage website says the public “petitioned the Post Office for a return to cylindrical boxes”, and that the Type K of 1980 was cylindrical.
Dates in order
- 1851: Trollope goes to the Channel Islands, according to the Jersey wiki.
- October 1852: the first box is erected, according to the heritage website.
- 23 November 1852: the first four boxes come into use in St Helier, according to Wikipedia and the Jersey wiki.
- 8 February 1853: Guernsey’s first three boxes, according to Wikipedia.
- 1853: the first mainland box in Carlisle, according to Wikipedia and the heritage website.
- 11 April 1855: the first six boxes in London, according to Wikipedia.
- 1874: red becomes the standard, according to Wikipedia.
- 1974: the rectangular Type G, according to Wikipedia.
- 1980: the cylindrical Type K, according to the heritage website.
- 12 July 2024: the first CR III box, according to Wikipedia.
Side by side
The colour of the very first boxes is the biggest gap. Wikipedia and the heritage website say olive green. The Jersey wiki says red. We show all three and choose none. The number ordered also differs: Trollope’s estimate was four for Guernsey and five for Jersey, while the Jersey wiki says the trial approved four boxes and seven pedestals and boxes were ordered for Jersey, with three approved for Guernsey. These may be different stages of one story. That is our reading, not a stated fact. Wikipedia says that, as of 2002, Royal Mail estimated over 115,000 post boxes in the UK.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia can be edited by anyone. The heritage website is a specialist hobby site. The Jersey wiki is a community history wiki and quotes a local historian. None is an archive of the Post Office itself, and we did not load one.
Questions a buyer would ask
A tin, a tile or a money box in the shape of a pillar box is a souvenir of an idea, not of an original. Ask what the cipher on it is, because a cipher puts a date range on the design, and ask whether the colour is meant to be the early green or the later red. None of our sources says anything about souvenirs, so we say nothing about them.
What we left out
Anything about Christmas posting, because none of the sources we read covers it, the New Zealand boxes mentioned in passing, prices, and present-day collection times.
Quick answers
When was the first pillar box used in Britain? According to Wikipedia and a Jersey history wiki, the first four went into public use in St Helier, Jersey, on 23 November 1852.
Who proposed pillar boxes? Wikipedia says Anthony Trollope, a Post Office surveyor, recommended cast-iron letter-receiving pillars after being sent to the Channel Islands by Rowland Hill.
When did pillar boxes become red? Wikipedia says red became the standard in 1874, and that repainting every UK box took another ten years.
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