Gold Post Box, Churchgate

Image: © David Dixon Taken: 11 Aug 2012

Royal Mail celebrated every gold medal won by a British athlete during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games by repainting one of their iconic red pillar boxes gold for each gold medal winning Olympian. Bolton’s Jason Kenny won two gold medals, so two post boxes in the town were painted gold. This one, for the track cycling team sprint, is on Churchgate; the other one, for the individual sprint, is outside the main post office on Deansgate Image In total, Team GB won 29 Gold Medals for the Olympic Games and 34 Gold Medals for the Paralympic Games; for team medals, a post box was painted gold for all team members (see http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/Olympic-Gold-Post-Boxes for list and more examples). This was the first occasion in modern times that Royal Mail had changed the colour of their post boxes from the traditional red which has been the standard colour for UK boxes from 1874, with very few exceptions. The original plan was for the boxes to be returned to their traditional red colour but in November, it was announced that they would remain gold and that a plaque would be fixed to each one (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20183986 BBC News). https://web.archive.org/web/20171231162534/https://www.goldpostboxes.com/ - archived 31st December 2017 (Royal Mail Gold Postbox Finder)

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