Communication

The iconic British pillar box carries the royal cypher and I always understood that one could estimate roughly when houses in the area around a pillar box were built by looking at the cypher. When I came to look at this one it gave me pause for thought. You see, the cypher is that of Edward VII. The trouble is, he died in 1910 and the houses round there - the box is at the junction of Wilmington Way and Greenfield Crescent - were not built until the 1930s at the earliest, and most are post-war. So why does this box not carry the cypher of George V as most of the boxes in the area do, or even George VI? I suppose it is possible that the original box had to be replaced and this one happened to be available, but it is still most unusual.

Going off on a tangent, it is interesting to note that British names feature heavily in the world of communication. It was Roland Hill who invented the prepaid postage stamp in 1839. The telephone was invented by a Scotsman - Alexander Graham Bell - in 876, and the inventor of the world wide web was another Brit - Tim Berners-Lee.