Two swans perched on a post box in Henley-on-Thames

TODAY WE PAID a brief visit to Henley-on-Thames. As we walked along the town’s picturesque Market Place, we noticed a post box (pillar box) on the top of which there was a beautifully knitted (or crocheted) pair of swans, one a white adult and the other a grey youngster. This creation was tightly fitted to the convex top of the red post box. It is an example of a ‘post box topper’. All over the parts of England that we have visited during the last few years we have seen many examples of these handmade knitted or crocheted ‘toppers’. The swan topper in Henley is a particularly attractive example. The people who make these decorative woolly hats for post boxes are sometimes known as ‘yarn bombers’.  

I wondered about the history of the toppers. All I could discover was in an article published online in northwichguardian.co.uk on 19 June 2021. It revealed that the Post Office:

“… first began to see these toppers in 2012 over the festive season, although this soon spread to other key times of the year such as Easter. More recently, we have noticed decorations celebrating various frontline workers during the pandemic, including postal workers.”

I first began noticing these folkloric creations in mid-2020 when the covid19 regulations were eased sufficiently to permit us to make day trips from London into the nearby countryside.

Creating toppers involves a lot of work and must surely challenge the creators’ ingenuity. Some of them are quite simple in design, but others, like the swans in the centre of Henley, are intriguingly complex. The toppers are unpretentious works of art which must bring a smile to the faces of many a passerby.