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 General Post Office from the earliest days of telecommunications, when the GPO ran the fledgling telegraph network in the UK, and later when telephones began to be adopted by the general population.

The posts help to map out the route of trunk telephone lines, and their major junction boxes - often these would co-incide with an early major user of telephones, which might be a grand house, a seat of local government or a hub of industry. Their absence tells us almost as much - of industrial decline, or transport rerouting, or perhaps the creation of new developments following the collapse of historic estates.

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, and not all features are available yet - so watch this space, and let me know if there's more you would like to see.