Pillar box, In front of 63 Wandsworth Road Belfast, County Antrim, BT4 3LT

A free-standing cast-iron pillar box of standard cylindrical design, manufactured between 1931 and 1936 during the reign of King George V. Originally sited on the outside edge of the footpath in front of a semi-detached house on the south-west side of Wandsworth Road, Belfast, facing away from the road. As of 2015, the box was removed by Royal Mail, placed into storage, and was being restored for display in the Titanic Building.

The box stands 5 feet tall and measures 21¼ inches in diameter at the cap, 15½ inches at the shaft, and 16½ inches at the base, identifying it as a Type B (smaller) cylindrical pillar box. It is painted pillar box red throughout, with a black base. Below the shallow oversailing cap — the edge of which carries small decorative dentilations — is an indicator tablet holder (the tablet itself is now missing, though it would originally have shown the next collection day). To the left of this holder is the text 'Next Collection' in bas-relief. Directly below is the rectangular hooded letter aperture through which post is inserted.

Below the aperture is the door, hinged on the left and protected by a lip running along the front of the cap. At the top of the door is a notice plate holder carrying collection day and time details, along with the box's individual number (BT4 310). Below this is a crown in bas-relief, with the door lock and handle to its right. Below the crown is a 'GR' Royal Cipher in bas-relief, and at the bottom of the door the words 'Post Office', also in bas-relief. The maker's name — 'Carron Company / Stirlingshire' — is cast into the front of the base.

The Carron Company was a Scottish ironworks founded in 1759 and based in Stirlingshire. It was contracted to produce pillar boxes from the reign of George V onward, continuing to manufacture post boxes for subsequent monarchs until the company went into receivership in 1982.

The iconic red cylindrical pillar box design was first introduced in Britain in 1879 and remained essentially unchanged in form until the 1950s, with the principal variations over that period being the height of the letter aperture and the design of the Royal Cipher on the door. The earliest cylindrical boxes bore no cipher and were informally known as 'anonymous boxes'; from 1887 onward, new boxes were inscribed with the cipher 'VR' (Victoria Regina) and the words 'Post Office'. The George V cipher on this box confirms it was installed between 1910 and 1936. Ordnance Survey mapping evidence narrows this further: the box does not appear on the 1931 County Series map but does appear on the 1938 edition, placing its erection between 1931 and 1936. This coincides with significant housing development on Wandsworth Road during the interwar period, on land formerly part of the Ormiston Estate, which would have increased local demand for postal facilities.

The first pillar boxes in the British Isles were introduced in 1853, though the idea of roadside letter boxes had been proposed as early as 1840 by Rowland Hill, the reformer of the British postal system. By the end of the 19th century, pillar boxes had been installed widely across large urban centres throughout the United Kingdom. Writing in 1889, J. Wilson Hyde, Superintendent of Edinburgh's General Post Office, observed that 'so much has it become the custom in these later times for the Post Office to afford facilities to the public in whatever will tend to increase the business of the Department, that in all large towns pillar boxes or branch offices are dotted about everywhere at short distances, thus altering the conditions which formerly obtained, when the chief office was the great central point where correspondence had to be deposited for dispatch.'

The box carries group value with two nearby post boxes recorded on the heritage register: a 19th-century Queen Victoria pillar box on North Road, and a mid-20th-century George VI pillar box on Connsbrook Avenue.