Wall box
It is held in place by steel pins at top and bottom which locate into machined holes in the front casting.
Initial examples were fitted with a simple wire tray internally over the base to raise any post off the lower surface.
This was necessary because water seeped into the box through the side seams and condensation could also form on the inside, making the base rather wet.
By 1879, UK wall boxes were also fitted with a drop-down hinged metal letter chute to help guide the stored mail into the waiting sack or basket during clearance.
In 1849, the British Post Office first encouraged people to install a letter box to facilitate the delivery of mail.
Before then, letterboxes of a similar design had been installed in the doors and walls of post offices for people to drop off outgoing mail.
The First National Standard (WB74) design was made by the Birmingham, UK firm of Smith & Hawkes Ltd. and the first boxes were installed in 1857.
The Eagle Range & Foundry boxes of the mid-1880s were made with smooth recessed collection plates and small neat VR cipher and crown.
Allen & Co. Ltd. of London which cause a lot of confusion for those photographing and studying them as they are identical save for the Maker's name on the base which may be obscured by 75 years' worth of paint.
As noted, a few wall boxes are, confusingly, free-standing, such as that outside Vollams Newsagents (formerly a post-office) in Gloddaeth Street, Llandudno.
A well-known example was situated at Waterloo station in London until removal in the late 1990s and subsequent restoration at the Isle of Wight Postal Museum.
As Edward, Prince of Wales abdicated in November 1936 without ever reaching his coronation, only a handful of post boxes were made carrying his Royal Cipher.
Following the Abdication Crisis in late 1936, resentment and bad feeling led to the removal or exchange of many of the doors of these boxes.
It was not until summer 1937 that boxes began to appear bearing the newly approved Royal Cipher of King George VI.
Coming to the throne in 1952, Queen Elizabeth II has had the longest reign of any British monarch since the invention of the post box.
After several EIIR pillar boxes were blown up by improvised explosive devices, the General Post Office (as it was at that time) replaced them with ones which only bore the Crown of Scotland and no royal cypher.
However, with the formation of the Irish Government Department of Posts and Telegraphs, their Gaelic script logo "P&T" (using a Tironian "et" instead of ampersand) began to appear on wall boxes, such as that seen below at Clonmany, County Donegal.
No cast iron wall boxes have been made with An Post's wavy line logo, but there are plenty of sheet steel wall boxes across the Republic bearing adhesive decals or screen printed with An Post's distinctive yellow on green logo.
It has been widely adopted by French postal authorities with a succession of finely detailed and often ornate boxes in France and its dependent territories.
