Wall-mounted station post box

Wall-mounted station post box

Smith & Hawkes, Birmingham

cast iron

c.1857(?)

Brookwood Station, Woking, Surrey

The original Brookwood Station was built in 1854, and replaced in 1902. This wall box obviously belonged to the original station, and since such wall boxes were introduced in 1857 and first manufactured by Smith & Hawkes (see "The British Post Box"), this likely dates from the '50s. N.B. The letter box hood is much better than the one over a similar box; it provides a better example of a wall box because it is entirely set into its wall.

What is most interesting about it, however, is that it would have been used by people visiting nearby Brookwood Cemetery (see Clarke), the "Great Camp of the Dead" as it was sometimes called, the "biggest cemetery in the country" (Mee 331). With its beautifully laid out 500-acre grounds, this cemetery was not only the destination of the funeral trains from Waterloo, and the last resting-place of many great Victorians, but also a place to visit — as it still is now.

The old cemetery train-track beside Brookwood Station (photograph)

Photographs and text Jacqueline Banerjee

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