Thank you so much to everyone who has got in touch to support our ‘save the phone box‘ campaign. Whilst looking into ways to preserve this iconic piece of Luccombe’s history we discovered that this is not the first time the phone box has been threatened and survived, as local historian Eric explains:
“The original kiosk was installed in 1941 at the request of the Parish Council under the GPO’s Tercentenary Concession where they agreed to provide a kiosk in any rural community provided the local authority paid an annual rental of £4 for 5 years.
The original phone box order
“Very few houses in the village then had telephones, and I have early memories of accompanying my mother every Saturday afternoon to the telephone box to talk to her sister near Kingsbrompton. Calls then cost two old pennies. This would have been in the mid-1950s. I don’t think that there was even a button A & B in those days, no dial, and calls had to be made via the Porlock operator.
Eric with the petition in 1992
“The next important event was in the autumn of 1992, when the clerk to the Parish Council contacted what by then had become BT, to ask if the failed bulb in the roof could be replaced, only to be told that they did not intend to, because the whole kiosk was to be replaced by one of the (then) ultra-modern KX glass & steel types. This resulted in a vigorous local campaign to keep the original K6, and culminated in a petition being sent to BT. This obviously caused a change of heart, and BT eventually told us that it had never been their intention to replace it.
An article about the phone box ‘rumpus’
The poster from the 1992 phone box campaign
“A further setback occurred in the following year, when would-be thieves caused major structural damage when they used a jack to try and gain access to the coin box. It was then thought that a glaringly modern kiosk would be replacing the old one, but much to the villager’s delight, BT managed to find a serviceable K6 replacement.
The damaged phone box in 1993
Press coverage of the replacement phone box
The phone box replacement with new concrete steps being installed
“The cartoon by the late Derek Quint is one he did for me, based on an original that he did for the West Somerset Free Press.”
Kwinty’s comment
It is heartening to know that the phone box has survived previous threats and it is great to see the community coming together to save our local landmark. In case you missed it you can read all about the latest threat to our phone box in this previous post.
Thank you Eric for this contribution. The history reinforces the reason we need to preserve our phone box. I hope people will add they support on this blog or the “save our phone box” blog,
This is a great story and further proof that our village landmark is worth fighting for.
.get the telephone box listed our box is listed in blisland and they canttouch it