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Places to visit
Where can I see old post boxes?
Several UK museums and heritage railways keep strong displays of preserved post boxes. This page lists places that are regularly open to the public. We have not listed every private collection. For boxes still in daily use on the street, the community project PostboxMap.co.uk lets you browse by location or reign.
The Bath Postal Museum, which once showed early wall boxes including First and Second National Standard types, closed in 2019 after the death of founder Audrey Swindells MBE. We acquired their First National Standard wall box at the subsequent auction.
Start here
- Letter Box Study Group
The acknowledged authority on the history, reporting, identification, and classification of British post boxes.
- The Postal Museum
Britain’s national postal collections, with post boxes at Calthorpe House in London (open daily) and the Museum Store in Loughton, Essex (by appointment).
- Isle of Wight Postal Museum
Arthur and Kim Reeder’s private collection, now well over 200 boxes, in a rural garden between Ryde and Newport.
Museums and railways in the UK
- Bruce Castle Museum, Tottenham
Includes a rare VR fluted pillar from Lyndhurst. The former CWU collection here is now reduced to a few pillar boxes.
- Oakham Treasures, Gordano, Avon
Houses the Inkpen collection (about 75 boxes), including outstanding early examples, plus the former Bletchley Park Post Office display.
- East Anglian Transport Museum, Carlton Colville
Strong street furniture and Post Office displays alongside trams and trolleybuses. Highlights include an 1887 A-size VR pillar and a rare WB83/5 Eagle Foundry wall box.
- Amberley Museum, Sussex
Vermillion Giant TK31/K4, Edward VII A-size pillar, George V wall and lamp boxes, and other postal and telephone items.
- Great Central Railway, Loughborough
Lamp boxes and a Ludlow inside the Gresley TPO set; usually accessible on Mail by Rail weekends when the set is at Quorn.
- Bury Transport Museum, Lancashire
Vermillion Giant TK31/K4 on display.
- Severn Valley Railway, Bewdley / Kidderminster
Vermillion Giant TK31/K4 at Bewdley; Penfold replica at Kidderminster.
- Manchester Transport Museum, Cheetham Hill
PB29 E-type pillar with built-in stamp vending machine.
- East Somerset Railway, Cranmore
Particularly well-restored Vermillion Giant TK31/K4 at Cranmore East.
- Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings
National telephone kiosk collection, plus a Second National Standard (WB75) wall box at the main entrance.
AA signs and street jewellery
- Cotswold Motoring Museum
At least nine AA village signs.
- Coventry Transport Museum
AA village signs and a strong petroleumania display.
- Ipswich Transport Museum
Around eleven AA village signs.
- Oakham Treasures
Thousands of enamel signs, including several AA village signs.
Further afield
- Singapore Philatelic Museum
Sadly now closed and converted into a children’s museum. It formerly held Elizabeth II pillars and lamp boxes alongside local types.
- South Africa
Notable British boxes include an Edward VII Type A Handyside pillar on Table Mountain summit, and an 1857 Smith & Hawkes fluted box at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, the oldest post box in Africa.
- Caribbean
Colonial-era British boxes survive in Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, and Bermuda. A Penfold once stood inside a Georgetown hotel in Guyana.
- Uruguay
Nine Cochrane Grove Penfolds from the mid-1860s survive in Montevideo and Colonia; the best-preserved is at the Uruguayan philatelic bureau.
- Malta Postal Museum, Valletta
Opened in 2016 at 135 Archbishop Street. Ex-British boxes remain common across Malta and Gozo.
- Hong Kong
Few colonial boxes remain. A D-type Scottish Crown pillar is still in use in Central; an 1887 Jubilee pillar and Carron lamp box are held by Hong Kong Post. Local recorders maintain maps of surviving royal-cipher boxes.
- Guernsey
Union Street, St Peter Port, is home to Pillar Box No.1, the only surviving Vaudin box still in situ.
- Jersey
Penfolds survive inside the Central Market and at Fort Regent in St Helier, the only examples in the Channel Islands.
- Isle of Man
Isle of Man Post sold most historic boxes at auction in 2018. A replica Penfold remains at Douglas Station; one Onchan D-type pillar is now at Oakham Treasures.
- Republic of Ireland
Folk Museum at Daingean, Co. Offaly: National Standard and Penfold (both red). An Post history display at the GPO, Dublin, holds the surviving Ashworth PB1; an Economy London Ornate is at Kent Station, Cork.
- Sri Lanka National Postal Museum, Colombo
Five colonial pillar boxes, a C-size wall box, and lamp boxes from the British period.
Finding boxes still in use
After a museum visit, many people enjoy spotting historic boxes still in service. PostboxMap.co.uk is a community project mapping UK pillar, wall and lamp boxes, which you can browse by location or reign.