A Victorian Post Box on Market Street in Preston - Royal Cyphers

A Victorian Post Box on Market Street in Preston

How many times have I walked past that and not realised that it was different to any of the other ones that I had seen locally?

The plaque is inscribed;

THIS VICTORIAN LETTER BOX WAS PRESENTED TO THE 1992 GUILD MAYOR ELECT COUNCILLOR MR HAROLD PARKER BY MR ALUN ROBERTS, DISTRICT HEAD POSTMASTER ON TUESDAY 31ST DECEMBER 1991 TO CELEBRATE PRESTON GUILD YEAR 1992

A Victorian Post Box on Market Street, presented to the 1992 Guild Mayor by Royal Mail

I had known that Post boxes had Royal Cyphers on them, but just presumed that they had all been replaced over time for ones with ER on them. I hadn't really thought about the ones that may have survived from previous monarchs' reigns.

Royal Cyphers that feature on Post boxes

I hadn't found the one in Preston in 'real life', I had to resort to the Interweb to find it. The first time that I realised that there might still be some Victorian ones in circulation was when I came across a privately owned one on the outskirts of Blackburn. I went to look at an old listed building called OLD HALL FARMHOUSE in Pleasington and they had one, painted in a different livery, on their driveway. I only noticed the VR on it quite recently, when reviewing some photographs that I had taken last winter.

A privately owned post box on the outskirts of Blackburn

From an historical point of view, it's just a shame that the Preston only arrived in 1992. It would have been nice to think that it had been there since the nineteenth century. I haven't found a database of them (yet), like are available for things such as; benchmarks, milestones and phone boxes.

Let me know if you know of one.

A Victorian Post Box on Market Street in Preston

Does anybody know of any original surviving pre ER post boxes around the historical town of Preston (now a city)?

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Further reading and sources of information

Royal Cyphers on Letter Boxes

https://www.postalmuseum.org/blog/royal-cyphers-on-letterboxes/

Letter Box Study Group

https://lbsg.org/

The history of letter boxes

https://www.postalmuseum.org/collections/highlights/letter-boxes/

OLD HALL FARMHOUSE
Listed on the National Heritage List for England

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1072418

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