Pillar Box Puzzle

People passing through Allhalland Street on their way to Bideford Parish Church one Sunday morning glanced down the street towards Bideford Bridge and just could not understand why there should be two pillar boxes on the pavement outside the Bridge buildings.

The solution to this picture poser comes from Mr Edward Weeks, of 31 High View, Pynes Lane, Bideford – he made the pillar box on the left!

One day his 8 year old son, Jimmy, returned home from Coronation Road Infants’ School and casually told Dad ‘I have told teacher you will make a pillar box for our class’. Dad, who admits ‘I’m no carpenter’ set about the task in his spare time. He studied the pillar box, which stands outside the Bridge Buildings, acquired some three-ply wood and commenced construction work. ‘I made it to a children’s scale. It is the first thing I have tried in that line’.

The pillar box has now taken its place at the school and is contributing to the education of the infants. So delighted were the children that they wrote ‘thank you letters’ to Mr Weeks. How did they reach Mr Weeks? Via the pillar box he made, of course. Said Mr Weeks ‘I was thrilled to bits about it’. A year ago Mr Weeks made the school a present of an old sewing machine – so that the youngsters could perforate their home made stamps.

Gazette newspaper 8 November 1957