History of letter box

World Post Day is celebrated each year on 9 October

History of letter box

The idea of letterboxing on Dartmoor originated in 1854 when a Dartmoor guide, named James Perrott, placed a bottle in a bank at Cranmere Pool as a receptacle for the cards of intrepid walkers that he had escorted there. This idea was described by one Victorian authority as "a snare for Tourists", but if one was taking a guided walk on the moor it was useful to have a goal, and, having reached that goal, a method of recording the fact. At that time there was of course no Military ring road, so the walk to Cranmere was sufficiently difficult to be worth recording. Leaving one's calling card was the "Kilroy was here" of the times.

By 1888, a tin box had replaced the bottle, and, in 1905 a visitors book was provided and gradually ones' signature in the book took over from the calling cards. Later, a rubber stamp and ink pad were added and it became fashionable to leave a post card addressed to oneself or a friend in the box, which would be stamped by the next caller to the box and posted on [via a more conventional letterbox] from his home town. In 1937, the site was taken over by the Western Morning News, and a granite box erected to replace the cairn. This box, built like a miniature stone hut, still stands and is, in fact, the only Dartmoor Letterbox that in any way resembles its G. P. O. [Government Post Office] counterpart, and one of the only two that have any permanent structure at all - the other being at Duck's Pool.

Duck's Pond letterbox dates from 1938. The box was set up by a group of walkers known as Dobson's Moormen, in memory of William Crossing, the Dartmoor writer and gazetteer. In addition to being a memorial to a great Dartmoor figure, it was intended to be a focal point for walks on the South Moor, though by this time the Military road had been built and to get to Cranmere no longer posed so much of a challenge. Both boxes were strategically placed, one at the center of the North Moor and one at the center of the South Moor, and for some years these two were the only letterboxes on Dartmoor [with the doubtful exception of the secret and undiscovered Belstone Box.]

By 1976, there were fifteen known boxes on the moor, and these were described in an illustrated chart, designed to provide interesting walks on the moor. This chart proved so popular that people started putting out other boxes to provide other sites to visit, and from then on letterboxes suffered a population explosion. Boxes were sited here, there and everywhere, sometimes not too wisely, so after much debate a code of conduct was thought up. This is designed to protect the antiquities of the moor and to insure that letterboxers and letterboxes cause the minimum of upset to the landowners, commoners and other moor users.