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Royal Mail

Categories: Transport

Before the 2012 Olympics started the Royal Mail committed to turn a red post box gold for each British Gold medal, Olympic and Paralympic. In the event this meant that over 100 boxes turned colour. Each one is associated with a particular gold medal and has been chosen to be close to the medallist's home town/borough. Here's the map. We don't believe that the Royal Mail despatched an employee with a pot of gold paint the instant the medallist crossed the line but they have said the colour is permanent.

The Royal Mail have their own website of memorials, nationwide: https://www.royalmail.com/memorials/home .

2022: Londonist have posted (ha ha) an excellent page on postboxes

2024: We read a WW2 'Letter from London' by Mollie Panter-Downes with: "Posting a letter has acquired a new interest, too, since His Majesty's tubby scarlet pillar boxes have been done up in squares of yellow detector paint, which changes colour if there is poison gas in the air and is said to be as sensitive as a chameleon." 

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This section lists the memorials created by the subject on this page:
Royal Mail

Creations i

Anthony Trollope - pillar box - Fleet Street

5 similar plaques have been erected.

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Anthony Trollope - pillar box - Piccadilly

This plaque commemorates the bicentenary of the birth of Anthony Trollope (18...

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Anthony Trollope - pillar box - Rutland Gate

5 similar plaques have been erected.

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Anthony Trollope - pillar box - Strand

5 similar plaques have been erected.

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Charlotte Dujardin gold post box

{On plaque attached to side of box:} This post box has been painted gold by R...

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Other Subjects

Grove Road Toll Bar

Grove Road Toll Bar

"In use in the 18th and 19th centuries" so the dates we give are very approximate.

Building, Commerce, Transport

1 memorial
transportation to Australia

transportation to Australia

One of the (many) supposed origins of the word 'pom' for an Englishman, is that convicts were branded with the initials of 'Prisoner of Millbank'.

Event, Law, Transport, Australia

5 memorials
Joseph Aloysius Hansom

Joseph Aloysius Hansom

Architect, founder/editor of The Builder and inventor of the Hansom cab.  Born York as Josephus Aloysius Handsom(e) into a Roman Catholic family.   Made a habit of snatching failure from the jaws o...

Person, Architecture, Transport

1 memorial
Handley Page V1500 bomber crash

Handley Page V1500 bomber crash

The aircraft had taken off from Cricklewood Aerodrome. At an altitude of approximately 700 to 800ft, all four of the engines were heard to stop, sending it crashing to the ground and catching fire....

Event, Tragedy, Transport

1 memorial
North South Route in Haringey

North South Route in Haringey

Alan Stanton, suitably impressed with this important plaque, informs that the North South route is now called Watermead Way. Somewhere there must be a plaque commemorating that name change. Please ...

Group, Transport

1 memorial

Previously viewed

submarine H.31

submarine H.31

Lost in WW2

Vehicle

1 memorial
Sir Francis Drake - Deptford Town Hall

Sir Francis Drake - Deptford Town Hall

SE14, New Cross Road, Goldsmith's University of London

The 1905 building is by Lanchester, Stewart and Rickards. All the extensive decorative sculpture work is by Henry Poole and has a nautica...

1 subject commemorated, 1 creator
John Milton

John Milton

Poet, essayist, playwright, historian, and diplomat. Born in the house called The Spread Eagle in Bread Street, Cheapside. Left London to study in Cambridge but found all the dull debates in Latin ...

Person, Education, Poetry, Seriously Famous

17 memorials
Jim Heales

Jim Heales

Poplar councillor imprisoned during the 1921 rates protest.

Person, Politics & Administration

1 memorial
D. Meinertzhagen

D. Meinertzhagen

Daniel Meinertzhagen VI. Head of the Frederick Huth merchant bank, as his father had been before him. Treasurer of the committee that built the extension to the German Hospital, which, given his we...

Person, Politics & Administration

1 memorial