In the latest article in the “Shoreham Unlisted” series, Richard Bingham phones it in.
It’s a sorry state. Three of the glazing panels at the bottom have been smashed. There is rubbish on the floor.
And that’s a shame. Because the red phone box outside the Post Office on Brunswick Road is an example of what architectural writer Gavin Stamp called “the single most successful and impressive example of British industrial design.”
The phone box as we know it best was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1880-1960), the versatile architect who also built Liverpool Cathedral and Battersea Power Station.
Scott’s original design won a competition run in 1924 by the GPO, which in its heyday was responsible for telephony as well as the postal service. The winning entry was dubbed K2 (that’s Kiosk 2, not the mountain).
In form, the K2 is beautiful as well as functional. Designed to offer shelter and privacy to the caller, it necessarily reflects human proportions. It is a tall building in and of itself, equipped with the three basic elements of western classical architecture: the pedestal on which it stands, the rising vertical, the pedimented roof.
Classical, too, in decoration. The fluting that surrounds K2’s door is Egyptian-influenced. The glazing of the K2, however, is firmly neo-Georgian, comprising numerous small panels in the manner of Georgian windows.
The domed roof – indeed, the whole design – is derived from the centrepiece of the memorial that English neo-classicist Sir John Soane (1753-1857) designed for his wife, and in which his son and himself were later buried. That memorial still stands in St Pancras Gardens, overlooked by the shiny new buildings of Kings Cross.
The Mighty K6
Shoreham’s phone boxes are examples of the later K6 model, designed by Scott in 1935 to celebrate the jubilee of King George V. K6 was determinedly more modern. Out went the classical detail of the fluting. The Georgian-style glazing was replaced by larger, more twentieth century glass panels.
What remains is the conspicuous signage. “TELEPHONE” is picked out in prominent capitals against an illuminated panel designed to be seen on the foggiest of London nights. In the daytime, the red colourway had much the same effect.
The humble phone box has enjoyed a potent after life. In Kingston, a domino-slide of red K6 telephone boxes enlivens the street scene. Elsewhere, they have become miniature lending libraries.
Before the K6, most phone boxes had been sited in London. It was the K6 that spread out to the provinces. Now it stands outside our 1930s Post Office, in need of some serious TLC.
