Police Posts!

Walking around the City of London, you might notice some light blue painted Police telephone posts. We walked past one (at the entrance to Guildhall Yard) which is not far from the City of London Police Museum.

The boxes in the City of London are light blue coloured, the ones outside the City are dark blue. Police boxes and posts were important tools for the Police from the late 1920s until the late 1960s, when they began being phased out with the advent of personal radios.

There aren’t many left in London today, however, some have been left in the City’s streets as a reminder of the world before mobile phones and radios came along and changed modern policing.

Posts were for officers on the beat and for the public to use to contact the police – an alternative to 999 when people didn’t have access to their own telephones. At the top of the post is a red lantern, which would flash when police were required to contact their station.