Eagle-eyed Hampstead locals will have noticed a romantic change to one of their familiar pillar postboxes.

Ahead of Valentine’s Day on Thursday the postbox on North End Way has been redecorated with quotes by former Hampstead resident John Keats.

The Heath and Hampstead Society welcomed the “imaginative project” which will be in place for a month.

“It raises the national profile of Keats House which is a welcome thing in itself,” said chair Marc Hutchinson.

Principal curator at Keats House Rob Shakespeare said: “Keats’s letters are some of the best known in the English language, and his letters to Fanny Brawne are particularly touching. None of her letters to Keats survived and the last ones were unopened and buried with him in Rome so, rather poignantly, we know how he wrote to her, but we won’t ever know how she expressed her feelings for him.

“This year marks the 200th anniversary of this romance, captured forever in his tenderly worded love letters.”