Installing our box in the garden

My family have many esoteric interests which all our children and now the grandchildren blame me for.  For example, we collect photographs of manhole covers manufactured by a company now called St-Gobain PAM.  This company originated in a town called Pont-à-Mousson which is in the Moselle département in France, hence the acronym PAM.  The covers are identified by the design incorporating one or more of the words, ‘PONT-A-MOUSSON’, the initials, ‘PAM’ or a depiction of the famous bridge in the town which has become the company’s logo.  We have found and catalogued hundreds of different designs from around the world.

Our keen interest in PAMs is clearly what would be required for letterbox collecting and yes, our family enjoy spotting British boxes, particularly Victorian examples.  The reason we concentrate on Victorian boxes is due to my parents who, when they were alive, lived in Gargrave in North Yorkshire.  In the wall of a pub on the corner of their road was a small Allen with a modified aperture.  As a younger man this was the first box that brought to my attention that we have some wonderful Victorian street furniture still in existence and still in daily use.

Our family’s passion in VR boxes has become quite competitive and potential new sightings are eagerly sent into our VRFam WhatsApp group for verification against our master catalogue.  Our eagerness is such that we maintain a running scoresheet of total ‘new’ sightings by each family member.  My current tally of 263 is not the highest, this is held by Steven our second eldest, with a total of 289.  Needless to say, like many in this group, we keenly look for likely places to sight a new VR box when holidaying around the country and, indeed, abroad.

Of all the early manufacturers, BP Walker was my favourite.  I was particularly taken by the font used on their boxes and, to me, the name of the company evoked wonderful scenes of their Brummie works in my imagination.  Because of my strange affiliation to Bernard Walker my wife, Karen, was often looking out for their boxes for sale as she wanted to get me one for my 70^th birthday.  She eventually found one being sold by UK Architectural Antiques based in Cannock Chase in Staffordshire.  It was duly delivered and kept in a wardrobe until we decided where to erect it.  The opportunity arose earlier this year when we had the top part of our garden redesigned and could therefore ask the designer to incorporate the box into the overall design.

Philip Turville, our garden designer, was extremely excited about being asked to include a letterbox in a design and came up with options that showed the box off as well as integrating it into the general flow of the plants.   His suggestion was to place it such that it would be hidden from certain views and hence become a focal attraction when approaching from some directions.   This picture is a stylised view of the area that was to be replanted, the round cut outs in the lawn show the positions of existing fruit trees. 

Not being very good at bricklaying I enlisted the help of Neal Hallam, a retired builder, who lives in our village.  It turned out that he regularly rebuilds a pillar for a VR box that often gets knocked over in the next village.  This box is on a tight corner and vehicles end up sliding into the pillar in icy conditions.   Using Neal to build our pillar was therefore an obvious choice and work started as soon as Philip, our garden designer, had finished.

 

Even though I’m not a bricklayer I was able to dig the hole for the footings.  The ground in that part of the garden has quite a depth of clay so I dug the hole just short of a metre deep.  Having looked at many pillars built of brick I’d opted to have ours 2½ bricks wide at the front with a depth of two bricks.

 

Philip had thoughtfully not planted the plants around the pillar, instead leaving them in their pots so they could easily be removed during the building works.  Neal came along after the hole was finished and filled it with concrete which had plenty of time to set while I sourced the required bricks.

 

 

 

 

I managed to find enough reclaimed Victorian bricks for our needs and also opted for bullnosed ones for the front corners.  I was also lucky that I was also able to find a rectangular pier cap of the right size.

 

 

Neal started work the day after I’d unloaded the bricks from the car and in no time at all had laid six courses which I felt was just the right height to place the box.  As you can see in this picture, I’d removed the five plants in pots around the area before Neal started laying the bricks and placed empty pots into the holes to make the eventual replanting easier. 

After a break for an hour, we carried the box out and placed it in position.  I should point out that the pillar was being built with solid layers of bricks without a central void. 

By the end of the afternoon we’d reached the finished height, leaving the last few bricks and pier cap until the next day.  

 

When the brickwork was complete it took four of us to lift the pier cap onto the top and I must admit my family and I are extremely pleased with the result.