In almost any street, the past hides in plain sight. Names can indicate a former use of the area, a respected if forgotten local worthy or an event of national importance. In the street itself, post and telephone boxes link the present and the past, with traditional designs that are now regarded as cultural icons still performing a valuable service alongside more modern versions.

Rowland Hill’s bright idea
Until 1837, letters had to be paid for on receipt and were taken away if the addressee refused to stump up the required fee. Then Rowland Hill suggested the concept of a stamp stuck to the item showing that the sender had paid for delivery. A few years later, a standard charge for all letters was introduced. The spread of railways allowed mail to be transported quickly over long distances, enabling literate families to stay in touch when some members had moved away to earn a living, and businesses to receive orders from all parts of the country.

Demand for the postal service for business and personal correspondence grew rapidly as Britain moved out of the hungry forties and into a period of prosperity but the sheer volume of letters made it less and less practical for all of them to be taken to the nearest dispatch office where queues could develop and clerks struggled to cope. Several years after they had first been used in Europe, street collection boxes were introduced in the mid-1850s for post which did not need to be registered at an office.

Installation of post boxes
In March 1855 a hexagonal box where stamped mail could be deposited for collection was installed in London between Farringdon Street and Fleet Street. At around 130 centimetres high and 70 centimetres wide it was well received by the public. The installation of new post boxes in towns across the country was regularly noted with approval in local newspapers of the time. The design was complemented for being neat and elegant. It was compact enough not to obstruct the highway and sturdy enough for a tired pedestrian to rest against. Within a few years, the design of the box had evolved into a round cylinder with its opening on the side rather than on the top. As well as free-standing boxes in the street, boxes which could be set into a convenient wall were introduced. Small oblong boxes which could be mounted on a post were introduced in country villages.

The first boxes were sited in commercial rather than residential locations and in busy places there were several collections a day. In 1869, a new wall box in Broomhill, Sheffield, a busy commercial and residential area, promised collections at 12.17pm, 6.42pm and 8.49pm. Despite the frequency, people dashing up the road to catch the last post was commonplace, even in the latter decades of the 20th century.

Birth of an icon
Telephone boxes became part of the landscape in the 1920s. In 1924, the Post Office, which had taken on the provision of telephone services alongside its historical role of delivering the mail, held a design competition for a call box which could be placed in the street. The winning design was created by the architect Giles Gilbert Scott, who was already famous for his work on Liverpool Cathedral.

Basing his work on a London mausoleum designed by architect Sir John Soane a century earlier, he created a kiosk which was instantly recognisable, lent status to the fledgling service and took up relatively little room on a pavement while being adequately sized, functional and private for the user. Interestingly Scott had designed without any thought of branding as his colour scheme envisaged a silver box rather than a red one. Known as K2 models, over 1,700 kiosks were installed before the design became obsolete in 1936 when it was replaced by the K6. Similar in shape and size, the main difference was in the positioning of the bars on the window panes. In a few places boxes were a different colour. Hull’s telephone service never became part of the Post Office and there, public phone booths were white.

The first blow to the traditional red telephone box came in 1968 with a modernisation that replaced the panes with large glass panels, removing some of the red.

A more serious one fell at the end of the 20th century when kiosks of all designs began to be removed from public spaces. As more and more people had a phone installed at home and also began to embrace the convenience of a mobile phone, telephone boxes were ceasing to provide a valuable public service. In rural and semi-rural locations, some became a financial drain.

New uses for redundant boxes
> Although many have disappeared from the streets, traditional red telephone boxes remain in public view as a range of alternative uses, commercial or community focussed continues to be found. Warley in West Yorkshire converted the village phone box into a museum of local history, with explanation boards and photographs on the walls and the slats on windows changed into shelf holders which display small artefacts. Harley in South Yorkshire is just one village where the former telephone box now houses a life-saving defibrillator. Other uses are as cash points, mobile phone charging points, mini-libraries, coffee shops, repair shops and florists. Given that some phone boxes have received listed building status, which prevents the structure being changed in any way, a considerable amount of ingenuity is involved in adapting these tiny booths for another purpose. The benefit of listed building protection for those which remain in their original location is that it protects the character both of the box and its environment.

The cultural landscape
When the first red post boxes were introduced in 1874, The Manchester Guardian commented that from an artistic point of view it was impossible to say anything in favour of the colour. However, it was better than the existing dingy green boxes which could be hard to find, and would stop letters being placed in disused pumps by mistake. The newspaper need not have worried. The public embraced the colour with enthusiasm and, within a few years, the frequent references to the red boxes in newspaper fiction and praise in letters to the editor, show how well the change had been received.

Those who questioned the shock of the new colour in 1874 could have had no idea how quickly pillar-box red would become part of the fabric of the nation. Far from having no artistic merit, red post and telephone boxes were showcased in countless outdoor scenes created by amateur and professional artists and photographers alike. The colour draws the eye to a focal point and can help to add interest to what might otherwise be a dull and monotonous street or pastoral scene.

Tourist attractions
In the 21st century a few post and phone boxes have become attractions in their own right. Windsor has an old mid-Victorian box in dingy green. On the seafront at Cromer stands a short box bearing the initials VR, standing for Victoria Regina. Museums have also given a lease of life to boxes which had been taken out of service, perhaps using a K2 or K6 telephone box to create a period feel to a street scene, or, like the Horniman Museum in South East London, using an old green post box to collect donations. At the other end of the timescale, several dozen post boxes received a coat of gold paint in autumn 2012, each in the home town of a British Olympian who had won a gold medal in the London Games.

Conclusion
Red post and telephone boxes became national treasures within a few years of first appearing on Britain’s streets. Robustly manufactured, well maintained and with an ability to adapt to changing times, it is hard to bet against some of them being around well into the present century.