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COLCHESTER’S High Steward was left scratching his head after a postbox he had used for more than 50 years vanished seemingly without a trace.
For up to 120 years, a Royal Mail postbox could be found ready and waiting on the pavement in North Station Road, just a few yards from the junction with Causton Road.
It had the cypher of King Edward VII, which dates it back to about the first decade of the 20th century, and has lived alongside the tracks where Colchester trams rumbled past from 1904 to 1929.
The North Station Road post office shut several years ago, yet the bright red, cast-iron postbox had continued to sit on the same site.
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However, Colchester’s High Steward and former MP Sir Bob Russell was left bemused when he was left standing with his letters and nowhere to post them.
To his amazement, all there was to be found of the postbox which had survived two world wars and the reigns of five monarchs was a new section of tarmac filling the formerly occupied round hole.
Sir Bob said: “There had been no notification, nothing.
“One day it was there, the next it had gone.”
Aware the two nearest postboxes – in Serpentine Walk and opposite the gates to Lower Castle Park – had early collection times, Sir Bob decided to walk up North Hill to High Street to post his letters.
On reaching Middleborough, however, he found the North Station Road post box had, in fact, been moved about 300 yards to the other side of the river where it was now sitting pretty outside Colchester’s newest sub-Post Office in Globe News newsagents.
Now able to post his letters, Sir Bob added: “I guess there is some sense in having a postbox outside a post office, but the problem is the new location is in a bus lane.
“This is the reason why, several years ago, a postbox which was located there was taken away because it would mean Royal Mail drivers would be breaking the law by going there to empty the box.
“Whereas motorists could stop in the limited waiting area in North Station Road to post letters, now the post box is in a bus lane this is not possible.”
