Icons of Empire: (1998)                

Where Prince Edward's, Flat Bastion and Castle Roads all converge, stands an old red 'phone box which is probably the last working example on the Rock... unless of course... you know differently.

For the last seventy years these diminutive architectural gems have put an unmistakable stamp of Britishness wherever they have been planted. They have become a part of our heritage, like it or not. They are the result of a competition launched in 1924 in which leading architects were asked to design a cast-iron kiosk to house the public telephone.

The winning design, known as K2, was produced by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and was to become more famous than some of his other works including Battersea Power Station and Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. His design was hailed as a masterpiece; ‘a distillation of the essence of classicism.’ as one critic put it. The first examples made their debut in Kensington and Holborn in 1926 and during the next eight years some 1700 went into service.

1935 was King George V's silver jubilee and as part of the celebrations the Post Office commissioned a new design from Sir Giles. It became design K6 (unsurprisingly named the Jubilee) and accounts for the majority of examples still to be seen, including the one in Castle Road. It is a testimony to Sir Giles that by the time he died - in 1960 - some 60 thousand of these had gone into service.

In 1985 British Telecom started to withdraw red kiosks since they were becoming increasingly expensive to maintain, not least because of vandalism.  More recently, the same reasons prompted Gibraltar Nynex to replace their red kiosks with a design more appropriate for the nineties. In future, the only red kiosks to be seen will probably be privately owned examples such the K6 in the garden of the Caleta Palace and the K2s in the Alameda Gardens.

If you want to try kiosk spotting, this is what to look for. The K2 has a reeded Grecian surround to the door and six rows of windows where each pane of glass is of identical size. The K6 has eight rows of glass, including a large rectangular pane and two small ones to each row. Skilled observers will also notice the perforated crown above the door of a K2 is replaced with a solid embossed crown on the K6.

                                                            

          

Today, twenty five years later, the Caleta Palace has gone and its K6 redeployed. The red boxes that Nynex were about to scrap have been re-assessed by Government as international symbols of Britishness and of high value to tourism; and so Gibtelecom continues to maintain them. Though it might not console a maintenance manager, these boxes which had a scrap value of around £60 a few years ago, now change hands for between £2.5K and £3.5K in Britain.  Many UK telephone boxes have been repurposed to house defibrillators or as lend/swap libraries, ours too have a new purpose; to reinforce our brand. Our various kiosks are as frequently photographed as our pillar boxes and policemen with helmets, bringing a smile to holiday pics across the world. 

Now, for those old enough to remember and for those just too young to have ever seen the inside of a pre-1960s ‘phone box:

 

                             

  

You used to put in 4 old pennies, on getting dial tone you dialled the ‘phone number to call, when the subscriber answered you pushed button A and the connection was made. If the number was engaged, or not answered, then you pushed button B and got your money back. 

How many of us, as youngsters, used to trawl the ‘phone boxes, pushing button B in the hope of a windfall?

  

First published at Insight Magazine Mar. 1998, revisited 2024.  Paul Hodkinson.