Ah, the phone box. Once the beacon of a modern, connected world, nowadays, the age of the mobile phone has rendered phone boxes pretty much useless, sadly taking up space and often smelling like urine.
And yet phone boxes are British icons. The red of the 1920s telephone booth has become a symbol of Britain akin to double decker buses or post boxes. Loads of those red phone booths were recently put on the market for just £1.
But the UK’s phone boxes come in all shapes and sizes – and one of those designs, the KX100, is now at the centre of a conservation campaign. The clinical metal cuboids, which were introduced in the 1980s, were described by the Guardian as ‘boringly ugly’ but have since become icons in their own right.
The BT boxes, which were designed to be heavier duty and less susceptible to vandalism, are now being dismantled due to their modern obsolescence, but the Twentieth Century Society is campaigning to have several of the KX100 boxes listed as protected buildings.
C20 describes them as representing ‘the final flourish of design-led telecommunications infrastructure in the public realm’. In England, the society is fighting to save the kiosk at Dunsop Bridge in Lancashire, which was the 100,000th one to be installed. In Scotland, the box in question is near Maaruig, on the Isle of Harris. It’s super remote, and thought to be the last remaining payphone to still bear vintage BT branding. In Wales, a booth in Machynlleth has been selected due to it being completely powered by renewable energy.
You can find out more details about this campaign on the 20th Century Society’s website here. And if you’re a huge fan of old-school KX100 phone booths, we advise you make the most of them before 90 percent of them are cruelly ripped from our soil.
Did you see that the UK’s worst airline for delays right now has been revealed.
Plus: 8 UK universities are the best in the world.
Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out UK newsletter for the latest UK news and the best stuff happening across the country