When was the last time you stopped to consider the humble postbox? Did you know that Irish postboxes have been around for 150 years? A recent call by the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht for Dublin City Council to put postboxes on the list of protected structures led Morning Ireland's Justin McCarthy to Abbey Street in Dublin, where he spoke to Willie Cumming, an architectural advisor who works for the government. They stood beside a postbox that predates the Irish State. And although some postboxes bear Free State symbolism, most of them still feature the royal crest, Willie said.

"I suppose the most notable thing when you look at the postbox is what we call the Royal Cypher, or the Royal Crest. So, in this case, we have the initials of the king, with the crown over the top of the initials."

The lifetime of the postbox in Ireland takes in three British monarchs: Queen Victoria, King Edward and George V.

"Funnily enough, of all the postboxes, the one that's the rarest is the George, because he was, relatively speaking, monarch for Ireland for a very short period of time."

Abbey Street was heavily damaged during the 1916 Rising and Willie speculated that either British troops or rebels could have sheltered behind the Royal Crest-bearing box. The postboxes represent different things to different people. Labour Councillor Dermot Lacey, himself a supporter of the Minister's call:

"Some people say they represent the ascendancy, the old British element, but sure, that is actually part of our history and we can't ignore that."

Across O'Connell Street in the GPO, Justin met Stephen Ferguson of An Post, who's written a history of the Irish postbox, from its British roots, when – surprisingly – its colour was pretty close to what we see today:

"Curiously enough, the original standardised colour was actually green throughout the whole of what was the British Isles at the time."

While he acknowledges that there's an elegance of design to the older postboxes that many people will admire, Stephen tells Justin that they're functional items that are still in use and that's why more modern postboxes are less iconic. They're raised off the ground with larger apertures for ease of use by both public and postal staff. Stephen doesn't believe in a blanket protection order either:

"Just because a box is old, of course, doesn't mean it's rare. There's quite a lot of these boxes, so it's important to preserve samples of particular types of manufacture and particular types of design."

But the biggest threat to our post boxes, as Willie Cummings tells Justin back on Abbey Street, is the fact that fewer people are writing and sending letters. And there's no protection order against the march of technology.

You can hear Justin's full report at the link above, and the rest of Morning Ireland, here: