Britain has had a love affair with its post boxes for over 170 years. They have been cast in iron, painted in green and then red, given different slots for different classes of mail, embossed with the cyphers of nine monarchs, and gradually reduced in size and ambition as the decades have passed. But not all post boxes are equal, and one design stands apart from everything that came before and after it. The Penfold pillar box is the most elegant piece of Victorian street furniture still in active use, and it deserves more attention than it gets.
Before the pillar box
Before the introduction of the pillar box in 1852, if you wanted to send a letter you had to take it to a receiving house, which was typically a post office, an inn, or a shop that agreed to accept mail on behalf of the postal service. The receiving house system worked tolerably well in towns but was less effective in rural areas and suburbs, and it required the sender to make a specific journey to a specific location rather than dropping a letter conveniently at the end of the road.
The solution, as mentioned in an earlier Curious Rabbit post on iconic British street furniture, came from an unlikely source: the novelist Anthony Trollope, then working as a Post Office surveyor. Trollope had seen similar collection boxes used in France and advocated for their introduction in Britain. The first British pillar box was installed in St Helier, Jersey in 1852, and the mainland followed shortly after.
The early boxes and the colour question
The first pillar boxes were not red. They were painted dark green, a colour chosen to help them blend into the street scene rather than stand out from it. The problem, immediately apparent in practice, was that they blended in too well. People couldn't find them. Several different designs competed in the early years of pillar box history, including hexagonal, oval, and cylindrical forms, each manufactured by different foundries with varying degrees of elegance.
Red was adopted as the standard colour from 1874 onwards, a change that solved the visibility problem decisively if not subtly. The various design variants were gradually consolidated as the Victorian Post Office sought standardisation, and by the 1880s the familiar cylindrical pillar box had become dominant.
The Penfold: 1866
Into this history steps John W Penfold, an architect who in 1866 designed the hexagonal pillar box that now bears his name. The Penfold box is immediately distinguishable from all other British pillar boxes by its hexagonal cross-section rather than circular, its elaborately moulded acanthus leaf cap and decorative panel detailing, and its general air of having been designed rather than simply manufactured.
The Penfold box was used as the standard design from 1866 until 1879, when it was replaced by the cylindrical design that became dominant. This relatively brief period of use means that authentic Penfold boxes are rare survivors. Fewer than 150 are believed to remain in service across the United Kingdom, with London having the highest concentration. Several others survive in museums or have been restored as heritage objects.
What makes the Penfold box remarkable is its proportional elegance. Most pillar boxes are purely functional objects that make no particular claim on aesthetic attention. The Penfold is genuinely beautiful, with a quality of presence that stops you when you notice one. The hexagonal form catches light differently from a cylinder, the ornamental cap gives it a vertical emphasis that the standard box lacks, and the decorative detailing rewards examination in a way that most street furniture doesn't.
The modern post box and what was lost
The cylindrical pillar box that replaced the Penfold and has dominated British streets ever since is not unattractive. The proportions are good, the red paint is cheerful, and the embossed royal cypher gives each box a specific historical identity that connects it to a particular reign. But it doesn't quite do what the Penfold does. It sits on the street rather than addressing it. It's the difference between a functional object and a piece of urban design.
Modern post boxes, introduced from the 1960s onwards and increasingly used for new installations, are more emphatically functional still. Simpler, cheaper to produce, and considerably less interesting to look at. The trajectory from Penfold to modern post box is a familiar British story: a Victorian moment of genuine ambition for public objects followed by a gradual retreat towards the merely adequate.
Finding a Penfold box
If you want to see an original Penfold box in use, London is the best place to look. Several survive in central and inner London, with examples on Victoria Street, in Mayfair, and in Kensington. The Postal Museum in London maintains a collection of historic post boxes and is well worth visiting for anyone interested in the full history of British postal design.
Curious Rabbit makes a laser-cut Penfold Pillar Post Box kit as a miniature tribute to this Victorian original, available as a flatpack kit or ready-made. For anyone who has ever stopped to look properly at one of the surviving originals, it's a small and satisfying nod to one of Britain's most underappreciated design achievements.
Curious Rabbit makes laser-cut wooden gifts and model kits, designed and made in Wales.
