Early history
Thames lies in the rohe of Ngāti Maru, an iwi of the Marutūahu Confederation. Marutūahu peoples migrated to Hauraki from the Waikato probably in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, largely displacing earlier occupants including Ngāti Huarere, who had held numerous pā in the Thames area prior to the late 1600s. Under Marutūahu, complex customary rights developed along the Thames foreshore, considered ‘one of the richest patiki [flatfish] grounds in the country, in which virtually every hapu of Hauraki sought a share’. At one stage, wooden stakes delineated 45 such interests between Tararu Point and the Kauaeranga River. Early nineteenth-century settlement included the Ngāti Maru stronghold at nearby Te Tōtara, which was attacked by Ngāpuhi in 1821, during the so-called Musket Wars. In 1833, a large pā and several associated kāinga on low ground at the junction of the Kauaeranga and Waihou Rivers were also noted by visiting Europeans.
After 1840, local Māori actively engaged in agricultural production to supply growing European demand in Auckland and elsewhere. The land between Tararu and Kauaeranga was particularly intensively used. In 1849, this was described by a European visitor as ‘a beautifully cultivated flat, inhabited by a great number of natives, whose houses are scattered about in all directions in the midst of the cultivations.’
Partly due to such intensive prior use and the speed of subsequent change, the rush of incoming Pākehā settlers that followed the opening of the Thames goldfield in August 1867 has been described as ‘among the greatest intrusions upon indigenous peoples in the Pacific’. In just over a year, some 15,000 Europeans moved into what had been an almost exclusively Māori community. The landscape was initially transformed with the creation of a town at Shortland, laid out at the mouth of the Kauaeranga River. Settler demand for land was such that in 1868 Auckland entrepreneur Robert Graham established a second township immediately to the north, known as Grahamstown. By 1871 the two settlements, by now conjoined and referred to as Thames, formed the fifth largest town in New Zealand.
Initial development of postal facilities (1867-9)
Postal facilities were a priority in the rapidly urbanising locality. Business and personal communications between inhabitants and the outside world relied almost exclusively on this service, which was organised and overseen by the colonial government. The first post office in Shortland is reported to have been established in September 1867, just one month after the Thames goldfield was proclaimed. In October 1868, an additional facility opened at Grahamstown.
From the outset, postal services struggled to keep up with demand. Complaints referring to the inadequacy of the post office at Shortland were already being received in May 1868. The following October, a deputation of miners ’testified to the serious loss of time occasioned by the present inefficient system’ and requested that the Government keep pace with the growing commerce of the place.
Improved facilities were soon provided. In May 1869, the Postmaster-General agreed to remove the Shortland and Grahamstown Post Offices ‘to a new one to be erected in a central position at which the business of both offices can be transacted…’ Overseen by architects Rumsey and Farrow , this opened as a purpose-built structure at the corner of Mackay and Mary Streets, Shortland, in September 1869. Two freestanding pillar boxes were additionally erected to receive mail for posting. These were positioned some 650-700 metres respectively to the south and north of the new, central post office building - near the sites of the earlier offices, which were closed.
Erection of the first pillar boxes (1869)
Erected in October 1869, the new pillar boxes consisted of cylindrical, cast iron receptacles that were both distinctive and ornate. One was placed in Willoughby Street, next to the junction with Pollen Street. Pollen Street formed Shortland’s main business thoroughfare, as well as the main connecting road with Grahamstown. During the first years of the gold rush, this street was a major gathering place for the local community, with thousands of people said to regularly parade its pavements on a Saturday night. The second pillar box was erected at the junction of Brown and Albert Streets in Grahamstown. It was similarly placed in an area of major community and business gathering, being positioned next to Thames’ Stock Exchange at what was commonly known as ‘Scrip Corner’.
Characteristically located in prominent public places, as in Thames, pillar boxes made sending written communications more accessible than previously. In New Zealand, they expanded capacity to post correspondence beyond an existing network of post offices and receiving-post houses. Together with wall- and ‘lamp post’-receivers, such facilities have been described as ‘the first visible and public sign of the age of modern communications’. At least in part reflecting growing literacy and the importance of broader written communication for personal and business purposes, they were in the vanguard of dramatic changes from the nineteenth century onwards, which have subsequently also embraced the use of telephone, radio, television and modern digital media.
Internationally, the first cast iron pillar boxes were erected in Belgium by 1850 - the same year that they were also trialled in Paris. A variety of designs were adopted in Britain from 1852 onwards, and subsequently in British colonies such as New South Wales, India and New Zealand. New Zealand’s first pillar boxes were erected in 1864, soon after the centralisation of postal arrangements in the colony (1858) and the introduction of compulsory pre-paid stamps for all mail (1862). The first receptacles were placed in major provincial centres at Nelson (2), Auckland (3), Christchurch (2), Wellington (2) and Dunedin (4). A further pillar box at Lyttelton by 1868 was followed by those in Thames. As relatively early structures in a New Zealand context, the latter can be seen to have formed distinctive and unusual features not only in the emerging Thames goldfield, but also within a broader geographical context.
Believed to have cost approximately £18 each, the initial receivers in Thames were manufactured by Bubb and Son. Operating from the Victoria Foundry in Sydney, this firm had been established as a partnership between Robert Watts Bubb (1805-91) and his son John Robert Bubb (1832-1900) in January 1856. The business was notable for its production of early pillar boxes, including the first letter and newspaper receivers in New South Wales in 1856 and 1861 respectively, and New Zealand’s first receptacles from 1864 onwards. However, the firm undertook a wide variety of other manufacture, including columns and railings for the Sydney Exchange in 1856, cast iron sewer pipes, and ironwork for the Australian building trade. At the time that the Thames pillar boxes were created, the business was being run by J. R. Bubb, who subsequently became a prominent figure in the development of the Sydney suburb of Burwood.
The initial Thames receivers conformed to a standard pattern that was employed by Bubb and Son for all New Zealand pillar boxes between 1864 and 1878. This consisted of a cylindrical structure some 1.8 m high, with an ornate, acanthus-leaf cap; horizontal posting slots immediately beneath the cap rim; and a main body that incorporated blank vertical slots in its upper part, lettering bearing the information ‘Post Office Letter Box’, and a door for emptying the box. It also encompassed an ornate, projecting base.
The design was a variant of that used for Australia’s first pillar boxes, erected in Sydney in 1856 - also manufactured by Bubb and Son. The Sydney receivers were themselves modelled on the initial pillar boxes used in Belgium and France rather than British prototypes, and had been designed by a clerk in the New South Wales post office, Thomas W. Levinge (c.1819-1884). Levinge’s talents extended to the design of several of that colony’s early stamps, and he subsequently also became New South Wales’ first Postal Inspector.
Modifications to Levinge’s initial design used for New Zealand’s early pillar boxes - including the Thames receivers - encompassed features that had more recently been adopted in New South Wales for newspaper-posting pillar boxes (1861). These included the replacement of three vertical slots - initially employed to facilitate posting from horseback - with a pair of horizontal apertures below a more pronounced rim, providing contents with greater protection against water ingress. In the New Zealand models, vestiges of the vertical slots were retained as blanks. A comparable design incorporating such features may also have been utilised for standard-size letter receivers in New South Wales.
The commissioning and design of the initial pillar boxes reflects close commercial and other ties between New Zealand and Australia in the mid-nineteenth century. Thames may have had particularly strong connections, housing many miners who had previously worked on the Australian goldfields; and Australian institutions that opened agencies in the settlement during the gold boom. Major buildings at the intersection of Willoughby Street and Pollen Street, where one of the new pillar boxes was erected, included what was then described the ‘best’ bank building in Thames - the Bank of Australasia - which had a head office in Melbourne. They also encompassed the Bendigo Hotel, named after a settlement that was central to the Victoria gold rush.
Extension and flexibility of the pillar box network (1870s-1960s)
At their opening, the Thames pillar boxes were considered likely to be of great benefit to local residents. In the 1870s, they were emptied twice a day. Likely to have been initially green in colour, they were probably repainted ‘pillar box red’ sometime after 1874, following British convention. The latter had been adopted for London boxes in July 1874, and by 1884 pillar boxes in the rest of Britain had been repainted the same colour.
The Thames goldfield continued to expand after the pillar boxes initially came into use. The peak year of the Thames gold rush, 1870, yielded gold exceeding £1,000,000 in value. Postal activity on the goldfield enabled Auckland province to achieve postal revenue that was close to that of Otago and Wellington.
The initial pair of pillar boxes proved insufficient for the growing needs of the settlement. Requests for an additional receptacle included one made in 1875, which was declined. In September 1878, however, a further pillar box of the same design as the first ones was erected a few blocks to the northeast of the Willoughby Street receiver, at the corner of Richmond and Rolleston Streets. Immediately following its placement, only Auckland and Dunedin had more pillar boxes than Thames.
Also manufactured by Bubb and Son, the new receptacle is likely to have been one of the last New Zealand pillar boxes made in Australia. After 1878, locally-made, hexagonal pillar boxes closely modelled on the British ‘Penfold’ type were introduced throughout the colony. These were erected in a wider range of settlements with increasing frequency during the latter part of the nineteenth century, becoming familiar parts of the landscape.
Pillar boxes in New Zealand were flexible to the needs of their local communities and were sometimes relocated within the same settlement to cope with changing postal demand or other circumstances. In 1881, the initial pillar box at the junction of Brown and Albert Streets was physically relocated to the corner of Pollen and Mary Streets in north Shortland. This evidently compensated for the removal of the main post office at the corner of Mackay and Mary Streets - designated a Chief Post Office in 1877 - to grander premises in Queen Street. It may also reflect the relative decline of Scrip Corner as a major centre for business in Thames, as revenue from the goldfields reduced from heights achieved in the early 1870s.
Routine maintenance of the Thames pillar boxes included repainting in 1886. At this time, a local newspaper noted that ‘the painter has always had considerable difficulty in protecting the lettering from the finger marks of larrikins…’ Reports of children in the settlement modifying lettering, playing with locks and occasionally setting fire to the contents of pillar boxes occurred over the next few years. Newspapers declared that the penalty for ‘defacing or injuring’ pillar boxes was £20 - a considerable sum. They also noted that under the Post Office Act 1881, the destruction of mail could result in up to seven years’ penal servitude or two years’ imprisonment with hard labour for the offender. In 1890, judicial authorities instructed a child of under twelve years old to be ‘severely administered’ with physical punishment for causing letters in the Mary Street receiver to be burnt.
Repairs to the Mary Street pillar box were undertaken in 1908, which possibly included reinforcement of its door hinges.
Heritage recognition and additional relocations (1960s onwards)
In the 1960s, pillar boxes throughout New Zealand were steadily replaced by the Post Office authorities. This followed expressed concerns by the Post Office Association that the receivers were leaky and difficult to clear. Some two-thirds of New Zealand’s pillar boxes may have subsequently been converted to scrap. They were replaced by smaller, wooden structures of ‘hutch-type’ design, which were mounted on posts.
Large-scale removal aroused public interest in the retention of survivors. According to an account published in 1969, threatened removal of the three early surviving pillar boxes in Thames was met with ‘public indignation…so great that they were left in peace, as historical relics.’ During Thames’ centenary celebrations in 1967, one of the pillar boxes - at the corner of Rolleston and Richmond Streets - was relocated to a new position in Queen Street, near the site of the 1880s post office and beside a busy highway. This and other activities undertaken as part of the commemorations reinforced Thames’ growing image as a town of historical significance. Repositioning to this location can also be seen as an acknowledgment of the growing importance of motorised routes in relation to postal collection sites.
In 1982, all three ‘Levinge-style’ pillar boxes in Thames were classified under the Historic Places Act 1980. They were subsequently physically conserved in the late 1990s, as part of an initiative overseen by local postal service staff. Prior to mid-2004, the Willoughby Street receiver was removed to a new site in Pollen Street, some 900m to the northwest of its original position. Relocation took place after the historic context at the corner of Willoughby and Pollen Streets had been adversely affected by the disappearance of earlier buildings. It also occurred at a time when written and printed communication was being rapidly transformed by widespread private and business use of electronic mail. The pillar box was replaced at the junction of Willoughby and Pollen Streets by a smaller, modern metal receiver.
The new site chosen for the former Willoughby Street pillar box was in a well-preserved part of Thames’ commercial centre, in south Grahamstown. Located close to many major industrial facilities, the latter had been a thriving area in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries, but had subsequently declined. By the 1990s, however, it was benefitting from increased opportunities presented by tourism, attracted by its considerable number of historic buildings and other landscape features. The former Willoughby Street pillar box was placed adjacent to an almost intact row of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century commercial premises, and other structures that form a focus for recreation and related usage by the local community and visitors.
At a similar time, the Mary Street pillar box may also have been moved a few metres from its previous position to the Pollen Street part of the junction with Mary Street. In June 2004, this receiver was closed for postal collection due to its proximity to Thames’ contemporary post office. Thames Coromandel District Council took over its maintenance, noting that all three pillar boxes were part of the townscape and important in relation to the history and zoning of Grahamstown as a historic precinct.
The two pillar boxes outside 711 Pollen Street and 700 Queen Street respectively, remain in use (2017), reflecting an enduring social practice undertaken since 1869 in the first instance, and in 1878 the second.
