Some interesting new uses for old disused phone boxes Red phone box facts Prototype was produced in concrete in 1920 In 1924 Sir Giles Gilbert Scott won a competition to design a new modelHis original colour was silver, but the Post Office changed this to red He also designed Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, Battersea Power Station, and Bankside Power Station (now the Tate Modern) The K6 model, commissioned in 1935 to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V, is the most common, with 60,000 installed About 2,400 phone boxes have been designated as Grade II-listed buildings They are also a familiar sight on the streets of Malta, Bermuda and Gibraltar The red telephone box was once a common sight across the land, a design so associated with Britishness that tourists would be as likely to pose beside one for a photo than to step inside to make a call. But with the rise of the mobile phone, the redundant kiosks are increasingly being put to inventive uses, from miniature art galleries to pint-sized pubs. A decline in payphone usage has drastically reduced the number of phone boxes across the UK - according to BT there were 92,000 in 2002, and there are currently 46,000, including 8,000 traditional red ones. While this is a far cry from their 73,000-strong heyday in 1980, fans will be glad to know many redundant red boxes have taken on an afterlife, ranging from the sensibly practical to the downright peculiar. Dial S for snack: Sample a salad in central London, or quaff a coffee in Birmingham End of the pier: Selling souvenirs in Brighton As part of BT's "adopt a kiosk" scheme, communities are able to take over a decommissioned telephone kiosk for £1. Although new users are not allowed to install "electronic communications apparatus", 3,500 have been snapped up and put to a variety of uses. One of the most common, especially in rural areas, is as a lending library or book exchange. In the Cambridgeshire village of Shepreth, the redundant kiosk briefly became a pub, as part of a protest at plans to turn the closed local into housing. For one night only villagers were able to enjoy a pint at the Dog and Bone. Want to withdraw a few pounds or pull a pint or two? Why not pop along to a phone box Some have become art galleries, including a rare green kiosk in Barningham, Teesdale. John Hay, from the village, said that when Barningham was offered the kiosk four years ago, nobody knew what to do with it. "All that was inside it was a beer glass, a crate, half a dozen spiders and a lot of water," he said. "I cleared it out - though I left the spiders, which I suspect are still there - and put in a Christmas tree, which must have convinced villagers I was well and truly mad." The green kiosk in Barningham has featured in an Italian travel company's brochure This red box in Loweswater, Cumbria, was the 3,000th to be taken over under BTs "adopt a kiosk" scheme, and now houses a defibrillator Tinsel time: The kiosk in Prickwillow, Cambridgeshire - a miniature art gallery - takes on a Christmas theme at this time of year On the commercial front, The Red Kiosk Company leases out decommissioned phone boxes, offering the chance to "run your own business out of an iconic red kiosk". Edward Ottewell, one of the founders, said: "One advantage of regenerating them is that they are refurbished to their original state, and their use prevents vandalism - all of our tenanted sites have had zero damage." He said coffee shops were a popular choice, and there were now office "pods", offering access to facilities such as the internet.
There's some great ideas there Terry I knew about the sandwich one in London Its good to see the boxes surviving and being made use of - love the 'dog and bone' name for the mini pub !
yep we have lots of red phone boxes still surviving around here in the villages unlike most towns and cities...but a couple in the local area are in use as something else. One is used by a flower seller...and another is used as a village lending library... Some people including a neighbour of mine have bought defunct ones, and have them in their gardens..
Here, they were called "telephone booths". If self-standing, they were usually colored in hues of wood tones. Indoors, they were built of classical oak construction. Outdoors, an aluminum-framed structure having glass or plastic transparent windows. Those were COLD in winter! Oak-constructed booths here now sell as antiques. $1000 and up. "Pay" phones are now very hard to find. Casinos have few left, here and there. On the street, none. While we lived in MO, the frequent power outages prompted us to look into alternate emergency means. Power failed several times a month. When faced with that, a 50 mile round-trip drive presented, to inform our phone was out of service. Last few years there, only ONE public phone was left in a town of 7000, in front of the Wal-Mart. Please understand that no cell phone service existed, at all.