The importance of an archive – Post Boxes of Padstow

The long, slow and premature death of the Post Office has been agonising to observe. Never has “death by a thousand cuts” been more apposite than the deliberate destruction of a once-proud service into the shabby shell of a business it is now.

The Post Office network is on the brink of collapse with more than 2,500 branches facing closure in the next 12 months, MPs have been warned. More than a fifth of sub-postmasters, who run the Post Office franchises across the UK, have said they plan to resign or downsize because of increasing financial pressures. This could mean a Catastrophic’ loss to many communities especially the smaller more rural communities.

With the digital era in full swing, we do not send as many letters and parcels as we used to so cuts were bound to come, which is a shame for a once great business.

Post offices now are so different from the town-centre post office of my childhood, a grand and elegant high-ceilinged building which sold not just stamps but represented the connection between the state and the citizen. It was where I sorted out my first passport and my first driving licence, where my mum paid her TV licence and my grandad picked up his pension.

Along with many closures the once grand post-box is set to have a change with the delivery company introducing new parcel post boxes.

ROYAL Mail is redesigning the postbox so that you don’t need to visit the Post Office to send your parcels. The delivery firm is revamping its traditional bright red post boxes so that they will be able to fit small parcels as well as letters. It’s the first time in 160 years that the postbox has had such a big revamp.

 

New parcel style postbox – none currently in Cornwall

 

All mailboxes in England bear the royal badges. Whenever there was a change of regime, so was the badge. No wonder, mailboxes bearing royal badge of different regimes on the sides can be found easily everywhere in the streets of England. But there is an exception. Postboxes bearing the Victorian badges can rarely be found in London because most of them had already been destroyed when the German air force bombarded London during World War II. Today most of the mailboxes in England are inscribed with the Royal Badge of the present Queen Elizabeth 2nd.

My latest project is to document all the Postboxes in my PL28 post code as we don’t know how long these will be here.

(The importance of an archive)

Postboxes of Padstow………. Postboxes with a PL28 post code

In the United Kingdom, you may have noticed that British red post boxes have some embossed writing on them.

VR post box – Queen Victoria    (postbox put up between 1853-1901)

ER VII post box – Edward VII      (postbox put up between 1901-1910)

GR post box – George V              (postbox put up between 1910-1936)

ER VIII post box – Edward VIII    (postbox put up between 20 January 1936 – 11 December 1936 before he abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson)

GR VI post box – George VI        ( postbox put up between 1936-1952)

ER II post box – Elizabeth II        (postbox put up between 1952-recently)

 

Old Post Office Penrose

Boyd Ave

Punion House High Street

Dennis Road

Porthilly view

Padstow – Old Post Office on the right it has now merged with the Spar shop which you can see in the distance

St Merryn – Trevithick estate

Trelawney Rd

Trevean Lane End

Porthcothan Mill

Porthcothan Mill

Porthcothan Bay

Trethias

Treyarnon Bay

Constantine Bay

Towan Green

St Merryn – Old Post Office

St Merryn – Church town

Gentle Jane

Harlyn House

Harlyn bay

Windmill

Trevone Old Post Office

Trevone Bay

Crugmeer

Treator

Trecerus Industrial Estate

Rumford

Cliffdown

The Drang Padstow