Modern inventions like emails and text messages might mean far fewer of us are in the habit of posting letters, but the UK’s red postboxes are still among the country’s most recognisable symbols. There are 115,000 of the iconic boxes in operation around the country, most of them bearing the ‘ER’ cypher of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Since King Charles has now been on the throne for nearly two years, new postboxes will bear his cypher. And this week, the first postbox bearing the King’s ‘CR’ cypher was unveiled.
The box is in the Cambridgeshire village of Great Cambourne, and its cypher consists of the first initial of the king’s name, ‘C’, followed by ‘R’, standing for ‘Rex’, the Latin for king, along with the roman numeral II, as he’s King Charles II. ‘CRII’.
The new post box was installed on Great Cambourne’s high street. Local school children will be the ones who get to post the first letters, which will be about their interests in the environment, and addressed to the king himself.
The tradition of having the reigning monarch’s cypher on postboxes dates back almost 175 years. The first postbox was introduced in the 1850s, to help make the UK’s postal service more efficient. Since postboxes are never replaced, their cyphers help to trace their age, with the oldest dating all the way back to the reign of Queen Victoria, Charles’ great-great-great grandmother.
Although other new postboxes had been installed since Charles succeeded his late mother in September 2022, existing stocks still bearing Queen Elizabeth’s cypher were used instead to reduce waste. Between August and October this year, 3,636 postboxes around the country will be updated with Charles’ cypher.
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