I walk by the James Antony Home furniture store. I have written in previous posts about the cherub and discus thrower figures outside. In addition, there is a British red telephone box on the corner of the parking lot. I think when Americans want luxury or upscale, they think of the British. After all, it is where Downton Abbey — the epitome of the uppercrust — originated. I have not been to Great Britain, but do love many of the British actors. Where else can you become a knight for your meritorious service? I’m thinking of Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Michael Caine, Sir Ian McKellan, etc., along with Dame Judi Dench, Dame Helen Mirren, Dame Emma Thompson, Dame Maggie Smith, etc. I imagine many of them have talked inside a red telephone box at some time. It is so iconic — let’s find out more about it.
History
The K1
According to the May 4, 2019 Museum Crush article “A visual history of the British telephone box” by Nick Sturgess, head of collections and interpretation at Avoncroft Museum, in 1912 the General Post Office took over the operation of phone boxes and started the process of complete standardization. The first of the K series of kiosks appeared in 1920. The K1 was the first GPO-built kiosk. Constructed of three concrete panels with a wooden door and a pyramid style roof that was topped off with a ball, it wasn’t a huge departure from the earlier “Birmingham” pattern box. Three versions were made, the differences being the windows on the side.
It is interesting or amusing to point out that some local authorities insisted that the phone boxes blended into the surroundings. Eastbourne decided that two K1 kiosks required ungainly thatched roofs!
According to Wikipedia, as of 2020, there are seven K1 boxes in existence, all of which have been listed at Grade II by Historic England, with two still located on British streets. The first is situated in Trinity Market in Kingston-upon-Hull, and the other in Bembridge High Street, Isle of Wight.
The K2
According to Wikipedia, the red telephone box was the result of a competition in 1924 to design a kiosk that would be acceptable to the London metropolitan boroughs which had hitherto resisted the Post Office's effort to erect K1 kiosks on their streets.
The Royal Fine Art Commission was instrumental in the choice of the British standard kiosk. Because of widespread dissatisfaction with the GPO's design, the Metropolitan Boroughs Joint Standing Committee organized a competition for a superior one in 1923, but the results were disappointing. The Birmingham Civic Society then produced a design of its own — in reinforced concrete — but it was informed by the director of telephones that the design produced by the office of the engineer-in-chief was preferred; as the Architects’ Journal commented, "no one with any knowledge of design could feel anything but indignation with the pattern that seems to satisfy the official mind." The Birmingham Civic Society did not give up and — with additional pressure from the Royal Institute of British Architects — the Town Planning Institute, Royal Academy and Postmaster General were forced to think again; and the result was that the RFAC organized a limited competition.
The organizers invited entries from three respected architects and — along with the designs from the Post Office and from The Birmingham Civic Society — the Fine Arts Commission judged the competition and selected the design submitted by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. The invitation had come at the time when Scott had been made a trustee of Sir John Soane’s Museum: his design for the competition was in the classical style but topped with a dome reminiscent of Soane's self-designed mausoleums in St Pancras’ Old Churchyard and Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.
The original wooden prototypes of the entries were later put into public service at undercover sites around London. That of Scott's design is the only one known to survive and is still where it was originally placed, in the left entrance arch to the Royal Academy.
The Post Office chose to make Scott's winning design in cast iron (Scott had suggested mild steel) and to paint it red (Scott had suggested silver, with a "greeny-blue" interior) and, with other minor changes of detail, it was brought into service as the Kiosk No. 2 or K2. From 1926, K2 was deployed in and around London, and the K1 continued to be erected elsewhere.
The K3
According to Natasha Lomas’ Sept. 21, 2011 article “Photos: History calling – the many faces of the iconic phone box” in ZDNet, as a cheaper alternative kiosk to the K2, Scott also created the K3. It followed the K2's design but was mostly made of concrete, a cheaper material than cast iron. The color scheme was also less flashy, with stone-look cream paint dominating so the box might more easily blend in. Some 10,000 K3s were put up across the UK.
However, concrete proved to be a troublesome material — cracking easily and not standing up to the British weather. The paint also peeled and the cream color made the kiosk tricky to keep clean. The use of concrete for kiosks was discontinued in 1929.
According to the Museum Crush article, much of the look of the K2 was retained in the smaller K3, including the back lit "Telephone" signs.
According to Wikipedia, a rare surviving K3 kiosk can be seen beside the Penguin Beach exhibit at ZSL London Zoo, where it has been protected from the weather by the projecting eaves and recently restored to its original color scheme. There is another in use at Rhynd in Perthshire.
The K4
According to the ZDNet article, here's the all-iron K4 — an ambitious design that incorporated post office functionality by including a stamp vending machine. The K4 was introduced in 1928, intended chiefly for areas that lacked a sub-post office, but was not a success. Soggy stamps and too much noise from the stamp-dispensing mechanism were among the reasons for its relatively short span. Fewer than 50 K4s were installed before the design was withdrawn in 1935.
According to the Museum Crush article, it was both enormous and difficult to site with access needed for all four sides; it couldn’t go against a wall and equally took up most of the pavement, prompting complaints.
According to Wikipedia, ten survive with four in public use at Frodsham, Warrington, Whitley Bay and near Turnstall, East Riding of Yorkshire. A fine example of a K4 may also be found outside the station building at Bewdley on the Severn Valley Railway.
The K5
According to the Museum Crush article, the K5 was not like the other kiosks but had a family resemblance in its design, particularly to the K3. It wasn’t designed to stand at a street corner but was intended to be erected in buildings for exhibitions and events as a temporary feature. Therefore, it is probably the only pop-up phone box that has ever existed. Made predominantly of plywood it came in seven pieces and could be packed into three cases.
According to Wikipedia, the K5 was metal-faced plywood construction introduced in 1934. It is not known how many were produced, and there is little evidence they ever reached more than prototype stage. A fully detailed replica constructed using the original drawings can be seen at The Avoncroft Museum in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, as part of the National Telephone Kiosk Collection.
The K6
According to Wikipedia, in 1935 the K6 was designed to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V. It was consequently sometimes known as the "Jubilee" kiosk. It went into production in 1936. The K6 was the first red telephone kiosk to be extensively used outside London, and many thousands were deployed in virtually every town and city, replacing most of the existing kiosks and establishing thousands of new sites. In 1935 there had been 19,000 public telephones in the UK: by 1940 — thanks to the K6 — there were 35,000.
The design was again by Scott and was essentially a smaller and more streamlined version of the K2, intended to be produced at a considerably cheaper cost and to occupy less pavement space. The principal differences between the two designs were:
- Size. The K6 was 8 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 0.76 tons. This compared with 9 feet 3 inches and 1.25 tons for the K2.
- Elements of the design were simplified and streamlined, in keeping with the "moderne" aesthetics of the 1930s. The Grecian fluting was removed from the door and window surrounds, and the previously separate pediment and frieze were merged.
- The crown motif which had previously been pierced through the ironwork to give ventilation, was now embossed in bas-relief. A new, separate ventilation slot was provided.
- A new glazing pattern was introduced. The door and two glazed sides of the K2 each had 18 equal-sized panes of glass arranged in six rows of three. In the K6, the number of rows was increased to eight, and the central column of panes was made considerably wider than those to either side. This improved visibility, and gave a more horizontal appearance to the windows, again in keeping with "moderne" principles.
The K6 has since become a British icon, but it was not universally loved at the start. The red color caused particular local difficulties, and there were many requests for less visible colors. The Post Office was forced into allowing a less strident grey with red glazing bars scheme for areas of natural and architectural beauty. Ironically, some of these areas that have preserved their telephone boxes have now painted them red. The paint color used most widely today is known as "currant red" and is defined by a British Standard, BS381C-Red539.
According to the ZDNet article, since 2008, British Telecom has been running an adopt-a-kiosk scheme enabling local residents to pay £1 to adopt a K6 phone box that would otherwise be removed.
Fabrication
The K1 and the later K3 concrete kiosks were produced at various and largely unrecorded locations around the country. This made quality control and supervision of the manufacturing process difficult, when compared to the GPO's experience with cast-iron post boxes and was an important aspect of the GPO's move towards cast-iron telephone kiosks. Over the years, five foundries were involved in this work for the Post Office. Lion Foundry in Kirkintiloch, MacFarlane (Saracen Foundry), and Carron Iroworks near Falkirk all produced batches of the K2, the K6 and the K8; and, in addition, Carron produced the single batch of K4 kiosks. The other two manufacturers were McDowall Steven and Bratt Colbran, both of which produced only relatively small batches of the pre-war Mk1 K6.
Although many kiosks have been fitted with replacement backs over recent years, unmodified examples generally have the identity of their manufacturer marked on a plate on the outside at the bottom of their back panels. A supplementary way of identifying the manufacturer is by means of casting marks on the various component parts — i.e. LF, CC, MF, MS and BC — which were used to various extents over the years. A more consistent manufacturer mark can be found at about shoulder height on the inner face of the back panel. These marks generally identify both the manufacturer and the precise model of kiosk. Up to around 1949, the year of manufacture is also included. The more recently erected non-British Telecom K6 kiosks — generally painted black — are for the most part new castings, sourced from new manufacturers.
Crown
From 1926 onwards, the fascias of Post Office kiosks were emblazoned with a prominent crown, representing the British government, of which the Post Office was an agency. The design was initially the "Tudor Crown," then in widespread use in government service. The same crown was used in all parts of the United Kingdom and British Empire. On the K2, the design was pierced through the ironwork, and acted as a ventilation hole. On the K6, a separate ventilation slot was provided, and the crown was embossed in bas-relief.
In 1953 the new Queen, Elizabeth II, decided to replace the Tudor Crown in all contexts with a representation of the actual crown generally used for British coronations, the St Edward’s Crown. This new symbol therefore began to appear on the fascias of K6 kiosks. St Edward's Crown was initially used on kiosks in all parts of the United Kingdom.
In Scotland, following protests over the use of English insignia, the Post Office — like other government agencies there — began to use, from 1955, a representation of the actual Crown of Scotland. To accommodate the two different designs of crown on K6 kiosks, the fascia sections were henceforth cast with a slot in them, into which a plate bearing the appropriate crown was inserted before the roof section was fitted.
The crowns were originally painted the same red as the rest of the box. However, since the early 1990s, when the heritage value of red kiosks began to be widely recognized, British Telecom has picked out the crowns on both K2s and K6s in gold paint.
Kiosks installed in Kingston upon Hull were not fitted with a crown, as those kiosks were installed by the Hull Corporation, later Hull City Council, then Kingston Communications. All boxes in Hull were also painted in cream.
The K7
According to the ZDNet article, by the 1960s there were calls for a change as people thought the classic red telephone box was starting to look dated. Another architect, Neville Conder, was approached to update it. The result was the K7 prototype, introduced in London in 1962. It was a glass-centric design that also experimented with aluminum. However, the K7's flirtation with aluminum proved to be its downfall as the metal was no match for the British weather.
According to the Museum Crush article, six K7s were put into use in London and Coventry, but the GPO were put off the design once it became apparently how quickly they weathered.
The K8
K8 was introduced in 1968 designed by Bruce Martin. It was used primarily for new sites; around 11,000 were installed, replacing earlier models only when they needed relocating or had been damaged beyond repair. The K8 retained a red color scheme, but it was a different shade of red: a slightly brighter "Poppy Red," which went on to be the standard color across all kiosks.
The K8 featured a single large glass panel on two sides and the door. While improving visibility and illumination inside the box, these were vulnerable to damage. There were two versions — the Mk1 and the Mk2 — with the most visible difference being in the detail of the roof and the surround of the “TELEPHONE” opals.
Privatization
In 1980, in preparation for privatization, Post Office Telephones was rebranded as British Telecom or BT. In February 1981, it was announced that all the red telephone boxes would be repainted yellow, which was BT's new corporate color. There was an immediate public outcry; the Daily Mail launched a campaign "against the yellow peril" and questions were asked in Parliament. In the House of Lords, the Earl of Gowrie, the Minister of State for Employment, called on BT "to abandon this ridiculous scheme." In the House of Commons, Mark Lennox-Boyd MP asked Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher if she would treat the decision "with the greatest possible dismay." Thatcher — who was responsible for the privatization — would only say that she could "see my honorable friend's point." Shortly afterwards, BT announced that only 90 of the 77,000 remaining traditional boxes had been painted different colors "as an experiment," and that no final decision had been reached.
The KX Series
After privatization in 1982, British Telecom introduced the KX100, a more utilitarian design, which began to replace most of the existing boxes. The KX100 was one of a series of designs, including the wheelchair-accessible open-sided KX200 and the triangular-footprint KX300. In January 1985, Nick Kane, the director of marketing for BT Local Communications Services announced that the old red telephone boxes would be replaced because they "...no longer meet the needs of our customers. Few people like to use them. They are expensive and difficult to clean and maintain and cannot be used by handicapped people." This time, BT did not relent, despite another vociferous campaign.
Modernization
Many local authorities used legislation designed to protect buildings of architectural or historic importance to keep old telephone boxes in prominent locations, and around 2,000 of them were given listed status. Several thousand others were left on low-revenue mostly rural sites, but many thousands of recovered K2 and K6 boxes were sold off. Some kiosks have been converted to be used as shower cubicles in private homes. In Kingston upon Thames a number of old K6 boxes have been used to form a work of art resembling a row of fallen dominoes. As of January 2020, it was estimated that 8,000 traditional red telephone boxes remain in public service. The KX+ — better known as the KX100 PLUS — introduced in 1996 featured a domed roof reminiscent of the familiar K2 and K6. Subsequent designs have departed significantly from the old-style red boxes. BT followed the KX series with the Multi.phone in 1999 and the ST6 in 2007.
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