The history
of the public telephone actually begins in the late 1880's but it was
not until the early 1900's that telephone kiosks started to appear.
Many early kiosks were silence cabinets which were commonly inside shops
& other public places and had attendants who would do most of the
work for you. Of the street kiosks, there were many different designs,
often localised to specific towns, Birmingham & Norwich each producing
their own designs.
In 1921, the first standard kiosk would appear, the 'K1'. It was adapted
from the Birmingham model and would later be redesigned with a different
window frame. Many places would only have the kiosks in their own colours
and in some cases, modifications were made to boxes. A well known example of this was Eastbourne, which had 2 K1 kiosks with thatched roofs.
In 1923, the GPO held a competition to design a new kiosk. Several designs
from companies and architects were entered. It was 1926 when the chosen design appeared, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's K2. The new
design had one feature that would become fluent in the telephone box,
a domed roof. It is said that the idea came from a lantern at the Dulwich
Picture Gallery. The K2 was too big and too expensive for mass production
so the K1 Mk 236 was introduced in 1927 and produced throughout the
country.
The GPO still wanted a new design and asked Sir Giles to produce another
design, in 1929 the K3 appeared, a smaller, concrete version of the
K2. The kiosk was a success with 12,000 appearing over the country. However, cheap concrete proved a problem and the boxes started to crack. Today, only a handful of the original K3s survive.
The next kiosk to be introduced was the K4 in 1927. It was intended to be a 24 hour post office
with a stamp machine and letter box added to the back of what looked
like a stretched K2. It was nicknamed the Vermillion Giant and was a
fantastic failure. Only 50 were produced.
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K1mk234
(Crich Tramway Museum) |
K2
(Mount Pleasant, Islington) |
K3mk1
(London Zoo) |
K4
(Amberley Museum) |
In 1934, a K5 was produced, made of plywood as a temporary kiosk for
use at exhibitions and fairs etc.. It was only in the 1990s that the
designs of this box were rediscovered and it is not known if any originals
still survive as the one which stands at the National Telephone Kiosk Collection at Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings is a mockup from the original
designs.
With the K3s still at large and problems occuring with them, a new cast
iron box was needed and in 1936 the K6 appeared for the first time on
the streets. The kiosk was perfect, it had all the good points of the
K1s and K3s mixed with the solidness of the K2 and most importantly,
the small size and elegance the GPO were looking for. It did have vandal
problems though, so in 1939 a Mk 2 design came out with improved features
to make them less of an easy target for the vandal. The K6 was widely
used to replace K1s and K3 and by the end of production, there were
nearly 70,000 K6s in Britain. Many areas didn't approve of the red and
so were allowed to paint them in alternative colour schemes (although
these days, most of them have been returned to red!).
Now into the 1960's and the GPO were considering a new design. Nevill
Conder's design for a K7 was chosen. It was made in aluminium and was
tested in 1962. The K7 was not adopted as a new design and only 5 were
made.
In 1965, another competiton was held to design a new kiosk, the K8.
Bruce Martin was the winning architect and his design appeared in 1968.
It was a very new design to the previous ones. The main differences
were that the glazing bars had gone to be replaced with just 1 big window
on each side of the kiosk and the domed roof was replaced with a much
flatter design. Nearly 4,000 K8s would appear, some of which replaced
K6s. For a brief time, the K8 was painted yellow but this didn't last and they were soon returned to red.
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K5
(Avoncroft Museum) |
K6
(Highmoor Cross, Oxfordshire) |
K7
(Avoncroft Museum) |
K8
(Camerton, Somerset) |
Vandalism was always a problem with telephone boxes and during
the 70s British Telecom made another modification to the K6, many kiosks
had their glazing bars ripped out and had a single piece of glass put
in like the K8. Another design was tried out for areas where kiosks
suffered extreme vandalism (boxes set on fire and some ripped out of
the ground altogether!) called the Booth 7A commonly know as the Oakham
as it resembled the Old Oak ham tin. The design was essentially a telephone
bolted onto a yellow hood. The design proved to be a success in the
areas it was used.
Things were still to change, over the next few years many different
designs of telephone kiosk were looked at but none chosen as kiosks
for the country. In 1985, the most radical change was to happen, British Telecom announced
there would be a major improvement to the public telephone service and
introduced the 'KX' range. A selection of new designs that were to be
the most perfect telephone kiosks you could imagine. The most commonly
used design was the KX100 which was the kiosk design but also introduced
were the KX200, a hooded unit, the KX300, a triangular unit designed
to be used in groups and the KX410 & 420, phones on posts. Nobody
could deny the fuctionality of the designs as their main objectives
were to be easy for disabled people to use and very easy to maintain,
but everybody could deny the attractiveness of the designs. In the late
90s, BT made an attempt to win the public over to the KX range by introducing
the KXPlus which is basically a KX100 with a red bar round the sides
and a domed red roof. The K6 was widely replaced with KXs and there
was much uproar at the loss of the classic kiosk. Today, many places
are being reunited with K6s as a scheme mainly in the mid to late 90s
to reinstall the kiosks took place.
Another factor in the story of the telephone box is that particularly
in the mid to late 90s, several companies challenged BT's telephone
boxes by bringing out their own new and perfect kiosks.
BTs KXPlus range are now appearing in blue
with Broadband access in them which could be the last throw of the dice
to save the telephone box. The idea is good but the practicality isn't,
you are unable to print out your internet findings in these boxes as
a printer and paper would create mess. The latest attempt to save the
under threat telephone boxes has been to install a cash machine on 1
side and have the telephone on the other.
In 2007 BT teamed up with JCDecaux to try a new design, the ST6. The
unit has a telephone on one side and a scrolling advertising board on
the reverse. The idea being the advertising would pay for the running
of the phone, they started appearing mid 2007.
With BT's removal scheme very much at large lots of communities were unhappy at their classic kiosks being removed. This didn't go unnoticed by BT so in 2009 they introduced the "Adopt A Kiosk" scheme where for the fee of £1, they would hand over the kiosk to the local council and remove the telephone equipment. Alternatively, if the desire was for the equipment to stay, councils could "Sponsor A Kiosk". Many communities have taken up the opportunity to adopt their kiosks and are now using them for a wide variety of things. One of the most popular used for adopted kiosks is as book exchanges, another is art galleries.
Many tried hard but never got close to designing that kiosk that would
become worldly recognised and used on countless items of London merchandise
and treasured garden ornaments etc... as Sir Giles Glibert Scott did.
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KX100
(Brenchley, Kent) |
KX200
(Epsom, Surrey) |
KX300
(Ruckinge, Kent) |
KX410
(Corhampton, Hampshire) |
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KX420
(Near Eridge, Kent)
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KXplus
(South Kensington, Central London) |
ST6 front
(Sevenoaks, Kent) |
ST6 back
(Sevenoaks, Kent) |
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KX520
(County Mall, Crawley, West Sussex) |
Booth 7A "Oakham"
(Stradsett, Norfolk)
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Modified K6
(Godstone, Surrey)
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