The end of BT Phone Booths in Wiltshire?

[G6Tanuki]

See:

https://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/n...re-threatened/

Must admit, the last time I used a phone-booth was about 25 years ago. Several of the local disused ones have been "handed to the community" - one has kept its glass and been reworked as a free lending-library; another is now desolate, glassless and serves as nothing more than an infrequently-used urinal.

Time moves on.

[evingar]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

See:

https://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/n...re-threatened/

Must admit, the last time I used a phone-booth was about 25 years ago. Several of the local disused ones have been "handed to the community" - one has kept its glass and been reworked as a free lending-library; another is now desolate, glassless and serves as nothing more than an infrequently-used urinal.

Time moves on.

Ditto - the article says only 31 calls were made in the last year from them. BT deserves a lot of brick bats but I'm struggling not to defend their decision to wind up this service - Tempus fugit.

Market forces I am afraid, not having a "mobile" if I need to call someone (emphasis on the need) I pop into a pub, buy a half or pint and ask if I can borrow a 'phone. To get sympathy I blame it on a flat battery!

Only done this once BTW, lovely pint.

[Station X]

I can't remember anyone in the UK using the word "Phone Booth", the newspaper article doesn't use it either, it sounds so American.

It was always "Phone Box" or "Telephone Kiosk" in my part of the UK. Booth was reserved for "Polling Booth".

[David G4EBT]

If a passing police patrol see anyone in a phone kiosk, in this neck of the woods and I dare say in most towns and suburbs, they'll tend to assume that those in the kiosk are up to no good, dealing drugs. Just a focal point at which dealers can conveniently rendezvous with 'customers'.

I have a great aunt who lives in a small hamlet in Cornwall called 'Henwood'. So small that there aren't any street names, and few house numbers - just names. If you need to locate anyone, you have to knock on a door and ask where so and so lives. Anyone will know. What was the village post box has for some time been a free lending library. The pic below was taken last summer when we were down there.

All a far cry from when our second son was born at home in 1968.

We didn't have a landline - not many households did.

Phone boxes were everywhere and were well used, often with a fidgety impatient queue outside, knocking on the glass. I wandered off down the street to the phone box to call for the midwife. Shortly afterwards a stern young lady about our age (28) turned up on a green Raleigh bike wearing a crisp dark green uniform. Up the stairs she went carrying a wicker basket with me following behind, whereupon she halted and said 'Where do you think you're going - there's nothing up here for nosey Parkers - do something useful - go and peel some potatoes or something'.

Shortly afterwards there was a cry, the midwife came downstairs, said 'you've got a son' handed me a bundle saying 'take these bits and bobs down the garden and burn them - you don't want them in your bin'. She said 'now you can come upstairs', whereupon she lectured me in a magisterial manner on my duties as a husband and father, hopped on her bike and was gone.

Every time I see a phone box, that even comes into my mind.

How times change, but then it was half a century ago!

[kalee20]

No I don't think I have used a public phone box for 2 years... Though in North Devon, GSM signals are not everywhere, so the presence of a landline phone in a box is still occasionally reassuring!

Sadly, it is nearing the end of an era.

[Paul_RK]

We've used one in Fakenham a couple of times in the past year, but only before the landline was connected: I've not owned a mobile 'phone and won't unless living without one is made too bothersome. The picture around here is varied, the occasional box is still up and running, two K6s in the marketplace are retained empty as street furniture, and several village boxes have been repurposed for swapping books or to house defibrillators.

Paul

['LIVEWIRE?']

I don't own a mobile phone either, but have access to two landlines, one at home, the other in my workshop. Chipping Norton used to have 6 or 7 Public call boxes, but we're now down to one red box in the town centre. All the other, more modern, kiosks have been repurposed to house defibrilators or in some cases removed.

[Refugee]

Look at the grass in front of the door on this one. The door has not been opened for at least a week. I have even got my own photo of it that I took several years ago in winter when it is more difficult to work out how long the door has remained shut for due to the grass not growing fast enough.
https://www.google.com/maps/@53.2551...7i13312!8i6656

[AC/HL]

Unless it's changed in the last 15 years this should be the position:https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/asse.../statement.pdf

[turretslug]

Originally Posted by evingar

the article says only 31 calls were made in the last year from them. BT deserves a lot of brick bats but I'm struggling not to defend their decision to wind up this service - Tempus fugit.

I was certain that their usage would be minimal nowadays- but that's astonishingly low! Very surprised that they've lasted as long as they have in that case, no business wants to support loss-makers like that, whatever the sentimental/safety/whatever attachment.

I always regarded them as a cramped and minor glimpse of Purgatory- using them was generally a matter of duress, they were miserable in winter and torturous in summer, usually damp, strewn with rubbish and, ahem, "business cards" and reeking of urine, the phone itself and coinbox were more often than not vandalised and the books were usually missing, burned or torn up to the point of uselessness. The many small panes of the Giles Gilbert Scott design were a vandal's delight, but must have been a pain to keep clean and tedious to replace.

Nope, time has passed them by, worth their place in history though, and if anyone really misses them, enough will have been preserved in museums or as hipster showers etc.

[Radio Wrangler]

Of course, just counting those 35 calls gives no indication of their importance.

David

[Dave Moll]

A local one now has a sign pasted to it that it is to be removed owing to the low number of calls on it. I would be surprised if there have been any calls on it in recent years, since it has been out of action for several years despite me contacting BT some time ago to notify them of the fact.

Once upon a time this call box was an important means of communication to our premises opposite which doesn't have a landline. As these were mostly incoming calls, they probably wouldn't get counted in the usage figures.

Likewise, would the thirty one calls mentioned above only include chargeable calls? If so there could have been emergency calls not included. Also the last two times I have used public payphones (albeit in commercial premises rather than the now-endangered Public Call Boxes) it has been to contact my car breakdown service on their free (0800) number - again probably not counted as "usage".

[cheerfulcharlie]

Now the dread is beaking down somewhere in the middle of nowhere and the mobile is out of action for some reason.

[AC/HL]

There was a doomed attempt at a half way house: http://www.cntr.salford.ac.uk/comms/telepoint.php.html

[Richard_FM]

I did read somewhere that Swindon had the largest amount of surviving K8 boxes, apparently most were taken up because they weren't iconic enough to be preserved.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Refugee

Look at the grass in front of the door on this one. The door has not been opened for at least a week. I have even got my own photo of it that I took several years ago in winter when it is more difficult to work out how long the door has remained shut for due to the grass not growing fast enough.
https://www.google.com/maps/@53.2551...7i13312!8i6656

The "coins not accepted here" sign is, to my way, illustrative of the demise of phone-booths (and yes, that's what I've always called them - whether the red-painted ones in the street, or the incompletely-enclosed acoustic-hood things you generally found in train, ahem, 'railway' stations).

One of the big issues I remember from the days when I *did* use street-phones was that they often got broken open for the money. The coming of Phonecards led to quite a few street phones becoming card-only because then there was nothing to steal and no need to send a man round to collect the money.

But Phonecards became extinct after only being around for a couple of decades!

[evingar]

Originally Posted by cheerfulcharlie

Now the dread is beaking down somewhere in the middle of nowhere and the mobile is out of action for some reason.

I had this back in the summer (structural failure of an almost new tyres in one of these modern cars that is only fitted with a can of "squirty stuff" and not a spare ) . No 'phone box - though I doubt there ever had been anywhere near! Knocked on a door and a nice chap let me use his landline 'phone otherwise it would have been a trudge up a nearby hill in the hope of getting a signal.

[Terry_VK5TM]

I was going to get a pic of what passes for a 'phone box' here, but extreme heat and bush fires put a stop to that.

We have one outside the Post office which is basically just a capsule on a stand I guess you can call it, not much good in pouring rain or burning sun.

[Richard_FM]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

The "coins not accepted here" sign is, to my way, illustrative of the demise of phone-booths (and yes, that's what I've always called them - whether the red-painted ones in the street, or the incompletely-enclosed acoustic-hood things you generally found in train, ahem, 'railway' stations).

One of the big issues I remember from the days when I *did* use street-phones was that they often got broken open for the money. The coming of Phonecards led to quite a few street phones becoming card-only because then there was nothing to steal and no need to send a man round to collect the money.

But Phonecards became extinct after only being around for a couple of decades!

I did wonder why BT phased out phonecards when they did.

According to my French teacher France had mostly withdrawn phones that took cash by the 1980s because they were a target for thieves. At first they issued coin like tokens (jetons) before concentrating on phonecards.