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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

Central London Railway

Central London Railway

Railway line, known as the 'Twopenny Tube', as all tickets were sold at the price of two pre-decimal pennies. It was taken over by London Underground, becoming the Central line. See Londonist for ...

Place, Transport

1 memorial
Dr. Francis Alexander Barton

Dr. Francis Alexander Barton

Co-pilot of the first British public airmail flight. He was a G.P. in Beckenham and had been obsessed with anything aeronautical from an early age. He was awarded a grant of £500 by the Alexandra P...

Person, Transport

1 memorial
London and Birmingham Railway

London and Birmingham Railway

Built the first intercity line into London (Euston), opened in sections, 1837- 8, engineered by Robert Stephenson. Merged with other railways to form the London and North Western Railway. The image...

Group, Transport

1 memorial
Greenwich Station

Greenwich Station

Located on the line between London and Dartford, it was originally part of the London and Greenwich Railway. It is also part of The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) extension to Lewisham which opened ...

Building, Transport

1 memorial

Previously viewed

The Blitz

The Blitz

During WW2 Britain came under heavy bombing from Germany for 8 months, 1940-1941. This was called 'the Blitz' from the German word Blitzkrieg meaning 'lightning war'. London was particularly badly ...

Event, Tragedy

53 memorials
Great Storm of 1987

Great Storm of 1987

In the early hours of Friday 16 October 1987 a great storm struck South East England. In four violent hours London lost 250,000 trees. Its skyline changed for ever.  22 people were killed in Englan...

Event, Tragedy

11 memorials
William Holman Hunt

William Holman Hunt

Painter and co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His intended middle name was ‘Hobman’ (his mother’s maiden name) which he disliked. Discovering that it had been misspelled as ‘Holman’ at ...

Person, Art

3 memorials