Tag Archives: urban

More good stuff… Again from The Guardian, by Mark Brown, 3 Mar 2023.

K8 boxes are last in the line of classics, say campaigners as nine still in working order get heritage protection

Nine rare cream-coloured public phone boxes that are still in working order have been given heritage protection by the government.

The K8 phone boxes are all cream – rather than red – because they are in Hull, the only place in England where the local council ran the public telephone network.

On the advice of Historic England, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said it was listing the best surviving nine in Hull and its surroundings at Grade II.

Sarah Charlesworth, the listing team leader for the north at Historic England, said the phone boxes were something from a bygone era.

“Nowadays we have mobile phones, so the need for a phone box has declined, but a lot of people still remember when that was the only option,” she said.

“For many of us they’ve been the scene of memorable moments in our own lives, from furtive conversations with first boyfriends to desperate calls home when we’ve been in a fix.”

Charlesworth said remaining phone boxes today were often mini libraries or pop-up art galleries, so for Hull’s still to be in use was “really quite rare”.

For the full article go to the Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/mar/03/hull-cream-coloured-phone-boxes-given-grade-ii-listed-status

This is the kind of news we like… From The Guardian, by Harriet Sherwood, 20 Jul 2023.

K8s installed on tube stations between 1968 and 1983 are listed for architectural and historic interest.

Four rare phone boxes on London Underground stations have been given Grade II-listed status by the government for their architectural and historic interest.

The phone boxes are among 11,000 K8 kiosks that were installed across the UK between 1968 and 1983. Only about 50 remain, mostly in Hull where they were part of an independent phone network rather than the property of British Telecom.

The K8s on tube stations were owned by London Underground and housed an internal phone system for station staff. As such, they were painted different colours to the traditional red phone boxes.

The newly listed boxes are at High Street Kensington and Chorleywood, both blue; Chalfont and Latimer, maroon; and Northwick Park, which is white.

Tom Foxall of Historic England, the body that recommends listing to the government, said: “There are very few designs that can be genuinely termed as ‘iconic’ but the K8 is certainly one of them. Like its predecessors, this kiosk was a defining feature of 20th-century Britain’s physical, technological and cultural landscape. Very few K8s survive, so they certainly need to be cherished and protected.”

For the full article go to the Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jul/20/four-london-underground-phone-kiosks-grade-ii-listed-status