page_title: Wall box
section_title: Elizabeth II
hierarchical_section_title: Wall box / History / Elizabeth II
caption_attribution_description: Type B wall Box at Cowley Bridge Exeter
context_page_description: Wall boxes are a type of post box or letter box found in many countries including France, the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth of Nations, Crown dependencies and Ireland. They differ from pillar boxes in that, instead of being a free-standing structure, they are generally set into a wall or supported on a free-standing pole, girder or other stable structure.
  In the UK, UK Dependent Territories, Colonies and former Colonies and in many former British Empire countries, wall boxes usually bear the initials of the reigning monarch at the time the box was made. The first UK wall boxes were erected in 1857 in Shrewsbury and Market Drayton.
context_section_description: Coming to the throne in 1952, Queen Elizabeth II has had the longest reign of any British monarch since the invention of the post box. (Queen Victoria reigned for nearly as long,  but post boxes only appeared halfway through her reign.) Hence there are more EIIR boxes on the streets of the UK and Commonwealth countries than of any other monarch. Wall box manufacture at the time of her accession was with W.T. Allen & Co. Ltd. 
  The greatest changes were in the size of the apertures in use. The older six inch wide aperture was not sufficient for modern larger letters and was quickly enlarged - first to eight inches and then to ten inches. This, combined with a change in contractor to Carron Co., led to a good variety of boxes in both Type B and the larger Type A. The contract for manufacturing cast-iron wall boxes ceased in 1980, but in the period 1952-1980 more than 20,000 boxes were installed in the UK.
  In Scotland there were protests when the boxes made early in the reign of Elizabeth II were produced. These bore the cypher "EIIR" but there were objections because Queen Elizabeth is the first Queen of Scotland and Queen of the United Kingdom to bear that name; Elizabeth I having been Queen of England and Queen of Ireland only. After several EIIR pillar boxes were blown up by improvised explosive devices, the General Post Office (as it was at that time) replaced them with ones which only bore the Crown of Scotland and no royal cypher. Red telephone boxes or kiosks of type K6 were also treated in the same way, so too GPO/Royal Mail lamp and Pillar boxes.
caption: An interesting version of the EIIR wall box in use as a pillar at Cowley Bridge, Exeter. It is a Carron Co. box with full-width 10" aperture
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