GPO Marker Posts
This site is dedicated to those cast iron pieces of street furniture that almost always go un-noticed, but are reminders of our social, technological and physical past.
Marker posts of a standard design were used by the Post Office (later known as the General Post Office, or GPO) from the earliest days of telecommunications, when they
ran the fledgling telegraph network in the UK.
The posts help to map out the route of long-distance underground telegraph cables, and their joints. In some cases these would be where branches led off the main
route, but more commonly where there was a technical reason for a joint (the early cables were manufactured in relatively short lengths, and had underground joints
every 150 or 176 yards).
These pages include further information about the posts themselves, hints and tips for finding previously unrecorded posts, a searchable database - including the ability
to find your nearest examples, an interactive map (including Google Streetview dynamic images of many of them), and a reporting form so you can add to our database and
knowledge of these relics.
The site is very much a work in progress, features are being added all the time, as are the locations and details of further posts - so watch this space, and
let me know if there's more you would like to see.
Latest reported finds:
Finds per Month:
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Derek Pattenson, Webmaster