Object Details
From:NHerts
Name/TitleLetter Receiving House letter box from Baldock
About this objectLetter Receiving House letter box, Baldock, 1830s. This is where you posted your letters before pillar boxes appeared in 1853. A horse-drawn mail coach then took your letter, not to the house of the person you had written to, but the post town nearest them, and they would collect your letter and pay for it.
Date Made1830s
Period19th Century (1801-1900)
Medium and MaterialsOrganic | Wood
Subject and Association DescriptionPeople didn’t really have letterboxes in their houses at this time, and it was only in about 1849 that the Post Office started encouraging people to have them. Generally the only letter box was in the building known as a letter receiving house, where people posted their letters to be delivered. There were no pillar boxes at the side of roads until 1853. So if this letter box was used in the 1830s, it would probably have been the aperture or letter box in a Letter Receiving House.
Baldock’s position at the junction of several major roads made it a focus of coaching activity and Royal Mail used the coaching system at this time to transport letters. Records in The Royal Mail Archive document moments in the postal history of Baldock, that show that there was a postmaster at Baldock prior to 1813. In June 1813 approval was given for a W. Stocken to be appointed Deputy at Baldock. A Deputy was the name earlier given to what we know today as (sub) postmasters. Stocken was appointed following the death of his father in the same position. In August 1837 he was granted expenses for forwarding mails. In February 1839 the Old Glasgow Mail Coach: Stevenage through Baldock to Royston was discontinued. The Cross Post between Baldock and Royston was not carried out on the 10th January 1841 due to the amount of snow on the ground. Not long after, payment of £1-10-0 was approved on 28 January 1841 for the expenses incurred by the Baldock Postmaster in conveying the bags, as the rider between Stevenage and Royston had been killed by a fall from his horse. The postmaster of Baldock was reported deceased in June 1844. The Postmistress of Baldock had an increase in salary from £30 to £35 per annum approved in April 1845. However, the main coaching inn seems to have been ‘The White Horse’ on Whitehorse Street, and the Post Office Directory of 1855 lists a Mr John Little as being of ‘White Horse hotel & posting house, White Horse Street’ and lists Mr Thomas Harvey as ‘watchmaker and postmaster, White Horse Street’. So it is possible the letter box aperture actually came from 8 Whitehorse Street.
The 1853 Directory lists a Post Office in the High Street run by a Sarah Stocken - possibly the postmistress mentioned above having a salary increase in 1845. So depending on its true date it is also possible the Letter Box was sited at 8 High Street. It seems likely that it dates from between 1830 and 1846 because of the cyphers and the orientation of the aperture. The preference since 1856 has been the horizontal letterbox that we recognise today, but before this, between 1846 and 1856, vertical openings were thought to be more secure. Before 1846, however, apertures had tended to be horizontal. The dimensions of the opening were also important, and normally the opening would have been 5 inches long by 1 ½ inches wide (152.4mm x 38.1mm), with the width shrinking to 1 inch from 1853. The opening on our letter box measures 6 inches by 1 ½ inches, so slightly longer than would be the norm, but a width that suggests a pre 1853 date.
Object TypeLetterbox
Object number1964.48.1
Copyright LicenceAll rights reserved