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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

Kew Gardens Station Footbridge

Kew Gardens Station Footbridge

Grade II listed, thsi bridge is a very early example of the use of reinforced concrete in Britain. Built in the age of steam, it still carries the deflectors and very high parapets which channelled...

Place, Transport

1 memorial
Spitfire aircraft

Spitfire aircraft

From our Picture source: "Produced in greater numbers than any other British combat aircraft before or since the War, 20,341 Spitfires were built in 22 different variants (excluding the navalised S...

Vehicle, Armed Forces, Aviation, Transport

5 memorials
Bawley fishing boat

Bawley fishing boat

Whitebait were caught by this type of craft in the River Thames, until 1950. The picture source website tells us that the Bawley is a variation of the 'smack' type of ship. The name "is probably de...

Vehicle, Food & Drink, Transport

1 memorial
Susan Constant

Susan Constant

The largest of the three ships which sailed in 1606 to found the Jamestown Settlement. Captained by Christopher Newport, she carried 71 colonists including Captain John Smith. There is some thought...

Vehicle, Transport, USA

1 memorial
Private Leonard Philip Maris

Private Leonard Philip Maris

Leonard Philip Maris was born in 1886 in Willesborough, Ashford, Kent, the youngest of the ten children of Alfred Maris (1841-1886) and Mary Ann Maris née Chittenden (1846-1930).His birth was regis...

Person, Transport, Germany

War dead, WW1
1 memorial