Henry Pyall after James Pollard.

Post Boys Watering their Horses.

19 x 15.5

An aquatint engraving in original hand colour by Henry Pyall after the painting by James Pollard and published in London in 1829.

There are some things that at some stage appear so common and essential to the running of things that you can't envisage life without them. Mangles, Fax machines, Telegrams and the London A-Z have all gone from the indispensable to the obsolete. And so it was with the Post Boys of C18th and C19th England, once seen absolutely everywhere and considered essential to the smooth running of society. Here we see them cooling off on a hot summer's afternoon by taking their horses into the water. Postal deliveries in the 1820s were dependent upon mail coaches travelling along all the major routes between the cities and the towns and the post boys usually delivering more locally. In some towns it was not uncommon to have between 6 and 10 deliveries a day and often a post boy would wait for a reply enabling people to conduct a written correspondence over 24 hours. Post boys also travelled from one post house to another and as the post houses often doubled up as inns it would not be long before the lads started to enjoy a pint or two at every stop!

£525