Victorian Post Box

Time for a bit of an explanation about my Silent Sunday post this week:

This a Victorian post box located behind St George's Church in Kendal. Regular followers of my bilpfoto account or my Flickr photostream will know that I've been trying to find and photograph as many variants of the traditional British red post boxes from my local area as I can find! Yes I am a bit of a geek but I just love this iconic bit of street furniture... 


Capturing this Victorian one actually made me think about the stories it could tell in well over a century of use. Not only would locals have sent mail to others but how many tourist postcards have passed through that slit? One of my subscribers on blipfoto was also thinking along the same lines:


I love postboxes and it's awesome finding an old one like this and, as you say, imagining all the items of post it must have carried over the years - call-up papers, birthday cards, embroidered postcards from The Front, lots of envelopes with penny blacks and penny reds, six different royal heads on stamps (including the uncrowned king) - if I've totted up correctly. Maybe even packages containing Kendal mintcake. (Preferably addressed to moi!) ;-)

~ PicturePoems

It seems I am not the only one who is a big fan of their red shininess:

1. The institution that is the red letter box! How Fab!

   ~ legalalien

2. These are wonderful pieces of street furniture. We're demolishing whole buildings and tower blocks built postwar and yet these things can still be found. Great shot.

   ~ PossMan