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A strange transition is happening in the streets as traditional red postboxes morph into something new.
‘The chosen ones’ are being wrapped in black plastic and labelled ‘out of service’, with a warning that an automated system is coming soon.
But people need not fear this switching of our familiar street furniture. Royal Mail is not putting in place a framework for world domination, one postbox at a time.
Instead, the company is launching its response to the parcel lockers that have sprung up at corner shops, filling stations and supermarkets over recent months.
The Royal Mail solar-powered ‘postboxes of the future’ are being installed across the UK, and the box in Recreation Ground Road, Stamford, is one of those being adapted.
The redesigned postboxes feature a barcode scanner and a drop-down drawer for parcels, a solar panel to power the technology, and a separate slot for letters.
Customers will be able to send parcels up to the size of a shoebox and track their items using the Royal Mail app, bosses say.
The pillar postbox halfway up the Rec, opposite Bentley Street, has been closed off ready for its change.
Not all will undergo a metamorphosis, with a Royal Mail spokesperson this week ruling out tinkering with a much-admired rarity in Ryhall Road, Stamford, which bears an Edward VIII cypher. He only reigned for a year, and only 271 boxes are thought to have been installed in this time.
The Royal Mail spokeswoman said: “We are only upgrading some ERII postboxes and have no plans to upgrade any heritage postboxes.”
This will come as a relief to Stamford History Society Members. On its website, Trish Auciello has shared an hour-long self-guided walk around town to see some of its finest examples of pillar, wall-mounted and lamp designs.
The locations of all 3,500 upgraded UK postboxes are not being revealed because sites “are still liable to change, Royal Mail has said.
Have you spotted a wrapped postbox ready to be revamped? Is there a solar postbox near you? Tell us in the comments or email suzanne.moon@iliffemedia.co.uk
History of the British postbox
In the 1850s, Chronicles of Barsetshire author Anthony Trollope was working as a surveyor’s clerk for the Post Office. He proposed the introduction of postboxes in Britain, probably after seeing road-side letter boxes in France and Belgium.
A trial on the Channel Islands was approved and on November 23, 1852, four cast-iron pillar boxes were installed in Jersey, with others arriving in Guernsey the following year.
They also appeared on the mainland 1853, although their design was not standardised until 1859. They then came in two sizes, a larger size for high volume areas and narrower for elsewhere, with a cylindrical shape, painted green.
People soon complained they couldn’t spot the green boxes, and red became standard in 1874, with green disappearing within a decade.
In the 1930s, blue boxes for posting airmail letters were installed but these only lasted for that decade.
In the London Olympics year of 2012, postboxes in the homes of Britain’s gold medallists were painted gold.
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