The first pillarboxes were introduced in 1853, since when Britain has had seven monarchs. I wanted to track down one postbox from each reign, noting that two of these could prove quite tricky, so I did my research and headed off to Dartford in Kent to try to grab the full set. I eventually succeeded, but I was not expecting Mr Blobby.
This box is in a prominent location at the foot of the High Street, or just off it, on the pedestrianised cut-through to the old market place. It's also the closest postbox to Dartford's main Post Office, although that moved from Hythe Street in 2018 and can now be found at the back of what's still a WH Smith. The box is positioned outside a pawnbroker's window, which feels a bit on point for Dartford, so you can eye up a nice watch or second-hand guitar while posting your letters. This is a Victorian Type A pillar box with a ribbed top, slightly smaller than your average Type B, with a narrow slot not amenable to rigid A4 envelopes. It's also painted all over with a Union Jack motif, and I did wonder whether this was a weird Dartford thing but the bunting down the High Street is all St George's flags and that would be a lot more on brand.
This is just over half a mile away along what used to be Watling Street, up East Hill and onward into suburbia. In Victorian times all that was here was a road and a gravel pit, hence when development kicked off in the early 20th century it needed a new pillar box with an E VII R cypher. I missed it at first because it's not outside the Post Office, which since 2018 has been at the back of the local Nisa grocery store. Instead it's outside where the Post Office used to be, a long time back, which is why the slot faces away from the road towards the Woodland Paws dog grooming boutique. The other reason I missed it is that it's not red, it's gold, which is odd because Dartford had no Olympic medal winners in 2012. And therein hangs a tale.
On 31st January 2024 residents of the Temple Hill area of Dartford discovered that some of their postboxes had been spray-painted gold overnight. Over the next five nights more followed - a total of 26 gold postboxes altogether - and local police released a CCTV image of a masked suspect they wished to question. A perpetrator was successfully arrested on 13th February, but leaving behind a cleaning bill estimated at £150 per box. A spokesperson said "This incident has caused Royal Mail to spend a significant amount of time investigating this matter. It will also cost a significant amount of money to rectify the colour of the post boxes to their iconic red"... and I'm intrigued to see that over a year later they still haven't bothered.
I had been intending to take a photo of the George V pillar box immediately outside Dartford station, but it too had been painted gold and not repainted red. That's fairly staggering for what's perhaps the most prominent postbox in town. This left me seeking an alternative GR box, which I fortuitously stumbled upon along St Vincents Road while walking between Edward VII and George VI. Annoyingly the owner of the adjacent house had chosen this precise moment to rest a ladder against his front wall and vigorously clean out his guttering. Taking his photo would have been gauche and improper, so instead I waited until he was distracted by moss and managed a discreet shot chopping him off at the legs. See how the George V cypher is the simplest of the royal designs, neither over-twiddly nor encumbered by the need for Roman numerals, nobody at the time expecting there'd ever be a George VI.
This always used to be the hardest of the royal cyphers to find, given that Edward VIII abdicated after less than a year. Research suggests that only 161 E VIII R pillar boxes were installed during his reign, of which about 130 were still intact thirty years later and even fewer survive today. None of these I believe are in Kent. Thankfully in 2015 I wrote a post identifying Edward VIII pillar boxes in the capital, of which three are in Bexley, so I went to the easiest to get to from Dartford which is outside Albany Park station. Specifically it's outside the former Post Office, now a Premier foodmart, just across the road from The Albany pub.
Annoyingly just as I turned up a Ford Focus drew up alongside and a woman got out, leaving the car door open while she faffed around at the nearby parcel collection locker. Taking a photo of the postbox would thus have required taking a close-up of her husband in the passenger seat so I held back for five minutes until they drove off, only for a Volkswagen to fill the space before I could wander over. My photo of this rare royal cypher therefore contains an over-prominent Polo, whereas it might instead have featured the barman at The Albany checking his sauce bottles before the Sunday lunchtime barbecue. Perhaps I'd have had a clearer shot in Blackfen or Foots Cray.
Back to Dartford and back to Temple Hill, a grid of Victorian streets with a slew of closed corner shops at several junctions. This particular box is a later addition to the streetscape, possibly as a result of bomb damage, located by the grit bin at the top of Lavinia Close. It is thankfully red but it hasn't been repainted particularly thoroughly because there's leftover gold paint everywhere - in the indents around the lid, round the edge of the cypher, inside the raised lettering and perhaps most noticeably inside the slot. It is arguably quite pretty to have a gold throat inside a red mouth but that doesn't make it right, and it looks like the local miscreant's handiwork is destined to linger for years. And it gets worse...
This bullet-shaped receptacle is the Type Kpillar box designed by Tony Gibbs and first introduced to our streets in 1980. Cylindrical and capless it was intended to be the pillar box of the future, but the cast iron hinges proved prone to failure so no more were produced after 2001. It has a wide slot capable of receiving all sorts of mail, and also what's probably the largest royal cypher of all with a particularly whopping E, R and crown. Also as you can see it very much isn't red, or indeed gold, with a slapdash white frontage and (if you look round the back) a pink mess with yellow spots. And all because Dartford's postbox painter wasn't silenced while he was out on bail.
On 19th/20th February 2024 four Dartford postboxes were spraypainted to look like Mr Blobby, and another to resemble a Cadbury's Creme Egg. Some of the former gained googly eyes to help increase the resemblance, while the latter looked particularly amateurish because it's hard to write 'Creme Egg' in large purple letters on a curved surface. On 8th March a Swizzels Drumstick appeared. The following day the graffiti sprayer was caught midway through a Union Jack, and Kent Police subsequently found 11 cans of gold paint at his home, 18 other cans and receipts totalling £169. His name was Danny Whiskin and in May he was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and ordered to pay £2600 in compensation. It's not clear who painted three more postboxes in August to resemble a Wispa, a Mars and a Twirl, but it is clear that Danny's compensation repaint hasn't yet reached this postbox on Victoria Road.
And here's the toughest royal cypher to locate. After the Queen died the Royal Mail continued to use up their stocks of E II R postboxes so it wasn't until last July that the first C III R pillar box was installed. It can be found in Cambourne High Street west of Cambridge, and although the King didn't turn up to unveil it the Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire did the honours and local school children posted the first letters. The database I've been using includes just 13 subsequent postboxes with a King Charles cypher, and although I could have gone to Brighton, Canterbury, East Wittering, Welshpool or the Isle of Man I chose to go to the nearest to London which is in Dartford. It's a 'lamp box' on the corner of Miskin Road and Penney Close, a short walk from the town centre, and is looking pretty pristine.
The cypher is no longer an intrinsic part of the moulding but cut from a metal panel stuck to the front. This should help make the eventual introduction of W V R cyphers economically painless. The 'Royal Mail' plate is similarly detachable, should they decide to change their name in future, and the aperture below is now very practically sized. But what bemused me was why it was here, given the houses nearby are either Victorian or postwar infill, not modular hutches on fresh streets. I'd also checked Streetview before I arrived, and had been mystified to see a new-ish E II R box in precisely the same spot. Amazingly I do now know precisely what happened because two lovely ladies who live in Penney Close saw me taking photos of the box and stopped to tell me all about it.
The original box had a stiff lock, it turns out, so could only be opened with care. Then one week the usual postlady went away on holiday, and in her absence the replacement bloke managed to get the key stuck in the lock and it broke off. The only way to remove the mail inside was to prise the door open, which damaged the box and the Royal Mail took it away. "We expected it'd come back repaired," the ladies said, but instead a brand new box turned up and that's why their obscure street corner now has a rare C III R cypher. I wish I'd asked them how recently the replacement took place - I'm still kicking myself for not asking - but I can tell you that the mail here is usually collected around 12.30pm, not the 9am it says on the front of the box. If you're friendly with your postlady you get to find out all sorts, and occasionally you get to pass the information on to an interested audience.
Seven postboxes, seven royal cyphers, six of them in Dartford. I'm not sure anywhere else can beat that.
