Back

Phone boxes

Stories of the Past·Susan Briggs· 2 minutes
Do you have a favourite phone box? Is it still a phone box? So many of them now have new uses, quite different to those days when we'd put 10p in a slot to speak to a friend before the pips ran out! Some are iconic: the 'K6' was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935 to commemorate George the Fifth’s Silver Jubilee. I've seen phone boxes that act as mini honesty boxes for surplus fruit and veg, libraries, exhibitions such as the one outside Skipton Town Hall. If you Visit Settle, you can see the Gallery on the Green in a phone box: 'the smallest public art gallery in the world, open 24/7 and filled to capacity at least twice a day!!' Have you see others?

When my daughter was young she noticed the one next to the main road where I live and asked what it was. I explained it was for making phone calls but being of a very different generation, she assumed it was a place to go with a mobile phone and get away from the surrounding noise! Very different memories to mine of queuing for the phone box with a pocket full of change to ring family when I first left home!