Five Royal Mail post boxes in the United Kingdom have been painted blue in appreciation of healthcare staff during the Covid 19 Pandemic.
If you were asked to identify an iconic item that resembles the United Kingdom, there’s a chance that some readers would name the distinctive red mail box seen all over the country. That pillar box red colour is a stand out feature on many streets in Britain today. The iconic shape is captured on camera by tourists daily, pleased to see something familiar that looks so British.
As an appreciation of the hard work by healthcare staff across the United Kingdom in fighting the Covid 19 pandemic, Royal Mail have painted five post boxes blue. They stand in five cities near hospitals in London, Manchester, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff. The blue colour is representative of the NHS logo.
So where can you find them? These rare designs are outside St Thomas Hospital in London (close to the Florence Nightingale Museum), Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Trafford General Hospital in Manchester, Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, and the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. A further blue box has been installed in the village of Marston Moretaine to celebrate the 100th birthday of Captain Sir Tom Moore in recognition of his fundraising for the NHS.
Has Royal Mail done this before and changed the colour of the post boxes? In 2012 they painted mail boxes gold in towns and cities where British olympic gold medal winners lived as a celebration of the London 2012 Olympic Games. You can still see these today and there are more of these as Britain did well in those games.
The distinctive blue post boxes will be just a small reminder of the tremendous change seen during the Covid 19 pandemic. There will be more sweeping change to come than simply changing the colour of a mail box. For now, it is lovely that someone thought to remember the healthcare staff battling the pandemic in Britain and create an icon.
Medical Atlas 