Charles Dickens's Personal Postbox

Can you imagine that you send so many letters that you have your personal post box at home? Let's say more than 14,000 letters over fifty years?

So did Charles Dickens. He requested a letterbox to avoid the steep one-mile road to the village of Higham. The postal service installed in 1859 a wall box at his residence, Gad's Hill Place (nowadays a school). It was one of the earliest to be introduced in Britain.

The Letter Box Study Group and the Charles Dickens Centre Charitable Trust have recently asked the Royal Mail to put back the postbox in service. Unused since 1990, it was recommissioned the day before yesterday. You can see here the ceremony: how Dickens' great-great-granddaughter sent the first letter through this box to her own granddaughter, who is currently Dickens' youngest descendant.

A special Dickensian postmark will be applied to any pre-Christmas mail posted in the box.

(More about this news here.)