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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

Gravesend Pier

Gravesend Pier

Designed by William Tierney Clark. During its early years it was used by millions of passengers, but by the turn of the century, it had fallen into disuse owing to the arrival of the railways. A Gr...

Building, Transport

1 memorial
Post Office Railway

Post Office Railway

The Post Office Railway carried post from Paddington Head Sorting office to Eastern Head Sorting Office in Whitechapel, a distance of 6½ miles (10.5km), with eight stations. Closed because it had b...

Vehicle, Transport

1 memorial
Santa Maria, ship

Santa Maria, ship

The flag ship, the largest of 3 ships, in which Columbus discovered America.  It was a 'caravel' a particular type of sailing ship used by the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th and 16th centuries....

Vehicle, Transport, USA

1 memorial
Peter Hill

Peter Hill

Elizabethan seafarer. With Robert Bell he co-founded the St Mary Rotherhithe Free School, to educate the sons of local seafarers.

Person, Education, Philanthropy, Transport

1 memorial

Previously viewed

Neville Elliott-Cooper, VC

Neville Elliott-Cooper, VC

Soldier. Born Neville Bowes Elliott-Cooper. He was a temporary lieutenant colonel, commanding the 8th Battalion the Royal Fusiliers, during the Battle of Cambrai. When he heard that the enemy had b...

Person

War dead, WW1
1 memorial
OutRage!

OutRage!

From the picture source website: "OutRage! is the world's longest surviving queer rights direct action group. Our witty, imaginative, daring, and irreverent style of non-violent civil disobedience...

Group, Gender Issues

1 memorial
Chelsea Temperance Society

Chelsea Temperance Society

Founded 1837 with Sydney Hall in Pond Place. At Exciting we learn "In about 1906 they published a set of cards showing their original Sydney Hall and vacant site nearby at the southern apex of Bury...

Group, Social Welfare

6 memorials
River Effra

River Effra

At the Brockwell Lido plaque there is an information board which begins by explaining the function of stink pipes: "What is a stink pipe? The lofty green pipe behind you is a Victorian stink pipe, ...

Place, Gardens / Agriculture

17 memorials