Bridgend
the town by the river
The Old Red Phone Box
Grade II listed Phone Boxes outside the old Post
Office in Court Road
The classic red Phone kiosk was voted the
greatest British design of all time
earlier this year, beating the Routemaster double-decker bus and the union
flag into second and third places. Today about 57,500 phone boxes remain on
British streets serving the public, and of these there are still some 9,400
which are the traditional red phone box models.
The designer of the Red Phone box was Sir Giles
Gilbert Scott (1880-1960) who designed the GPO's K2 and K6, which was the
most famous models of phone box designs, the Telephone kiosks first
appeared in the 1900s. These were usually inside shops and hotels, which
provided people with a quiet area where they could make calls in a private
space.
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was also responsible for the building of the
Battersea power station the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, and the
Bankside power station now the Tate Modern
The K2, which stood 9ft 4in (2.8m) tall and measured 3ft 6in (1m) wide,
was considered expensive and very unwieldy to install. The GPO then tried various other
types of phone box until Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's update, the new K6, which people would
today consider the traditional British phone box, which appeared on the streets in
1935 and after a few modifications to prevent vandalism, a total of 70,000
were made. They had wooden doors and stood 8ft 4in (2.5m) tall and measured
3ft (0.9m) wide, they weigh around three quarters of a tonne, and
required a crane to
move them into position on a concrete base.
Many of the old red phone boxes, the most common of which is
the K6 model, were eventually decommissioned in the mid 1980s when
the
newly privatised British Telecom decided to replace them with the
new aluminium-framed
KX100 light weight model.
The classic Red Phone Box is a reminder of a time when
products and buildings were built to
last and to show the pride people had in their communities and the things
that they had to share, including the public telephone box. They are as much a symbol of
Britain as the yellow cabs of NY and are in great demand the world
over, one kiosk has a place on the fourth floor of a Manhattan
office building, but the UK still remains the biggest
market...
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's prototype design for the British red phone
box can be found to this day under the left arch at the entrance to
the Royal Academy of Art in London.
The old Post Office in Court
Road
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42 Dunraven Place, Bridgend
Contact: Mike 07840 287 383
web site here
Bridgend Sandwich Bar.
Est: 1940
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