Take it as red, John Cooper knows his post boxes

Published on Sunday 13 December 2009 21:52

FOR more than 50 years John Cooper has been making post boxes for the Royal Mail.

And today his workmanship will be tested to the full on what is expected to be the busiest day of the year for the postal system.

The grandfather has been making pillar boxes and "lamp boxes" – those on poles – for the Royal Mail since the age of 16.

The company expects people to post cards they have written over the weekend ahead of the last posting dates of 18 December for second class and 21 December for first-class mail.

Mr Cooper, 69, started making the boxes as an apprentice at Carron Company in Falkirk, then moved to Machan Engineering in Denny, which now has the contract to make them.

He said: "Usually it says the maker of the pillar box on the back, so any time I'm out and about I have a look to see where it was made and whether I can say we made that.

"One of the boxes we made is in Gibraltar. It's painted up really good and lots of people get their photo taken beside it."

The sections of the boxes are cast in foundries in Bo'ness and Denny and are then put together and painted at Machan, which was started by Bill McMullen after the Carron Company went into receivership in the early 1980s.

They make nearly 1,000 post boxes a year for the whole of the UK, using only products from Scotland.

Mr Cooper, from Falkirk, is planning to retire next year, but he is handing down his skills to his grandson at Machan.

There are about 100,000 post boxes across the UK and about 10,000 in Scotland.

The Royal Cypher of Queen Elizabeth II does not appear on post boxes north of the Border.

It was dropped in the 1950s following a spate of fires started in post boxes by protestors who insisted in the interests of historically accuracy she is technically only the first Queen Elizabeth of Scotland.

Before 1859 there was no standard colour for post boxes across the UK.