King Edward VIII Post Box: The rare post boxes you can spot around Yorkshire
Edward VIII ascended to the throne on January 20th, 1936, following the death of his father, King George V.
During Edward’s reign of 326 days, the Post Office commissioned the Carron Company at Falkirk in Scotland to begin the construction of pillar boxes bearing the new royal cypher of ER for Edward Rex (Rex is king in latin), and the Roman numerals VIII in smaller lettering.
By the time Edward announced his abdication on December 11th that year few boxes had been erected on British streets.
One of these rare pillar boxes (pictured) stands on the corner of Cookridge Lane and Mavis Lane in Leeds.
Among other recorded locations, one is on Coldcotes Avenue in the city’s Harehills district, three are in Scarborough, three in Sheffield and one in Bridlington.
Redundant Edward VIII boxes became sought-after as garden ornaments, which may have been the fate of the one which formerly stood next to the Pavilion cinema in Stanningley between Leeds and Bradford.
The introduction of post boxes for letters has been attributed to the novelist Anthony Trollope, who as a surveyor with the Post Office travelled round Europe and is said to have seen road-side letterboxes in France and Belgium.
The idea was trialled on the island of Jersey in 1852, and the following year the first box on the UK mainland was erected in Carlisle.
The most familiar style of post box in the UK is the Type B, first introduced in 1879 and painted what became known as pillar box red.
Constructed from cast iron, many of them were also commissioned from the Carron Company in Scotland. The earliest bore the initials VR, the royal cypher meaning Victoria Regina (Regina is Latin for queen).
Being so rare, there is an Edward VIII Red Box Appreciation Society.