Edward VIII Pillar Box, North footpath of Crown Road South, Glasgow

This is a 1936 pillar box, a cast iron post box likely made by the Carron Company in Stirlingshire. It is situated on the north footpath of Crown Road South, opposite the junction with Hyndland Street in the west end of Glasgow.

The post box is cylindrical and made of cast iron, painted black at the base and red above. It has a swept frieze beneath a shallow, dentilled domed cap. A full-height, left-hinged door has a cup handle and a lock on the right side. The lower portion of the door displays the cipher ‘EVIIIR’ in raised gothic lettering, with a crown above and the words 'Post Office' embossed below. There is a rectangular opening for letters and a notice frame located above the door.

The current pillar box was installed during the very short reign of Edward VIII in 1936 and is shown on a National Grid map from 1949, published in 1950, with its position unchanged since that time. Earlier post boxes were present on Ordnance Survey maps dating back to 1896, 1913 and 1935, and these were replaced with the Edward VIII pillar box in 1936.

Royal Mail pillar boxes were introduced following the Postal Act of 1839, championed by social reformer Rowland Hill, who advocated for a single, prepaid postage rate for standard letters. This led to the creation of post offices and roadside letter boxes nationwide, standardising letter costs. The first free-standing pillar box was introduced in Jersey in 1852, with their use extended to mainland Britain by 1853. The first cylindrical post box design appeared in 1879. The royal cipher on the post box acts as branding, typically reflecting the current monarch’s reign; an exception to this is Scottish post boxes constructed from 1952 onwards, which feature the Scottish crown instead of the royal cipher. Edward VIII reigned from 20th January to 10th December 1936. While doors on wall post boxes were usually replaced with a George VI cipher, the doors on pillar boxes like this one were generally left unaltered.