Hull’s cream-coloured phone boxes given Grade II-listed status

source - Wikimedia Commons/kitmasterbloke

Hull’s cream-coloured phone boxes given Grade II-listed status

Well here we go, straight back in the saddle with this latest article about a rare variant of an already-endangered piece of technology - the public call box.

In this instance the phone boxes in question are not the earlier, more famous Giles Gilbert Scott-designed glass-and-metal K2 to K6 series of red boxes but rather the later K8 design from the pen of architect Bruce Martin, which were introduced across Great Britain in the late 1960s to supplement the existing 50,000-odd K2 and K6 boxes that were still prevalent at the time.

source - Wikimedia Commons/Oxyman

Markedly different from the designs that had come before it, the K8 boasted a modern light and airy Sixties feel thanks to large single panes of glass bereft of any intricate metalwork.  Intended to be easier to repair and maintain, over 11,000 K8s were installed up and down the country - only replacing existing K2s and K6s where absolutely necessary.  While many continued in service over the next 20 years or so, the design ultimately never gained as much appeal as the iconic red boxes that came before it.  It's only really lasting claim to fame is that it sported a slightly different shade of crimson - "Poppy Red" - one which went on to become the standard colour and was retrospectively applied to all existing boxes throughout the country.  However, the design's supposed strength over its predecessors - its ease of maintenance - was ultimately outweighed by the frequency of repairs as a result of vandalism.  Allied to the fact that it actually cost more to manufacture than the older models, a great number were subsequently replaced by the (rightly) unloved KX-series following the creation of British Telecom after the privatisation of the GPO in the 1980s.   As of 2023, a mere fifty-odd K8s still exist around Britain - some, I'm pleased to note, already with listed status.

source - Wikimedia Commons/Tim Green

Rare K8 phone boxes in Hull awarded listed status

Unusual among these few remaining K8s are the handful still to be found in the city of Hull, which was (and still is) the only place in England where the telephone network was run by either the local council or a private provider and not the GPO/ BT.  As a result, all Hull's phone boxes were painted not the traditional red but a rather fetching shade of cream to reflect their independence from the national network.  Now I am pleased to see that nine of these surviving boxes have been given Grade-II listed status by Historic England, hopefully preserving them for future generations to at least see what we used - and sometimes still use - before the advent of the mobile telephone (for, I am delighted to note, these particular boxes continue to fulfil their original function, containing as they do working telephones which must also now be preserved in working order).  

I join with the Twentieth Century Society and the people of Hull in celebrating this decision, which gives me great hopes for the future of all the remaining 10,000 or so phone boxes in this country, that there will never come a time when we have none left. 

Knit for Britain from Above

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Knit for Britain from Above 

Returning to another series of articles that previously appeared on Eclectic Ephemera you may recall the posts from 2011 and 2012 about the creation of the wonderful online history resource Britain From Above, which aims to catalogue and digitise over 90,000 aerial photographs of Britain taken between 1919 and 1953.  By the sounds of things the project is going well and all 95,000 images should be available at the end of the 4-year project, in 2014.  It really is a fascinating site and I urge you all to check it out if you haven't already.

Now I see that the Britain From Above people have this week started a jolly little wheeze that should appeal to the [many] knitters who I know make up my readership.  I have to say I didn't realise that it was World-Wide Knit In Public Week (I have to admit I sometimes think these things are thought up on the spur of the moment by people with a vested interest and too much time on their hands - I mean, National Sausage Week, really?!) but hurrah nonetheless.  Although I'm sure those of you who do knit do so in public any day of the year here's an opportunity to have a bit of fun and get a bit involved in the Britain From Above project.

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The team behind the site invite you to knit an aeroplane (they even helpfully provide a pattern if you don't have one of your own) and then, finding an historic aerial photo of an area near you, take a snap of your knitted aircraft in the same spot and post it on the website.  It sounds like a splendid way to get out and about and, as the site says, "showcase your knitting skills and find out more about the history of the place you live in".  Not to mention raising the profile of the Britain From Above project a notch or two in a wonderfully clever way.

So how about it, then?  Any knitting-wizards out there fancy knocking up a little flying machine and maybe taking a pic or two?  If anyone does have a go, do let me know on here!

Vintage aerial photography of Britain

Aerofilms Ltd. DH60 Moth at Hendon, 1928.  Image courtesy of Britain from Above.

Yet more archival material now available online - aren't we being wonderfully spoilt of late?!

Britain from Above: English Heritage unveils thousands of fascinating aerial images

Last year I blogged about the beginnings of English Heritage's latest project Britain from Above which, as the name suggests, features several thousand images of Britain taken from the air.  Interesting enough, but the clincher is the fact that these photographs were taken between 1919 and 1953.  Now the dedicated website is live and you can see parts of the British Isles from the air in a totally new and different way - in the past!

What Britain used to look like from the air

Just one year after the end of the First World War and only 16 years after the first powered flight, pilots Francis Lewis Wills and Claude Grahame-White founded Aerofilms Ltd. and took to the skies to photograph the United Kingdom from a never-before-seen vantage point - the air.  It is simply fascinating to see locations - areas one can be familiar with today - looking so very different during the 1920s and '30s, in their first appearance from an aerial platform.  Already I've found images of local places, such as my local railway station, that give a glorious insight into the life of the area during the first half of the 20th Century. 

Wickford railway station - from where for 10 years I commuted to London - in 1928.
Image courtesy of Britain from Above.

Early aerial photos of the UK go online

Truly this is a remarkable resource and one I feel sure I shall continue to delve into for a long time to come.  There really is something for every amateur (and, dare I say, professional) historian here - I can almost guarantee that there will be at least one picture of a place near you - and things aren't finished yet as barely 20% of the 95,000 images in the 1919-53 collection have been digitised so far.  Over the course of the next four years English Heritage aim to turn the project into one of the premier sources of early British aerial photography, and I for one can't wait!

Southend seafront, Marine Gardens, pier entrance, Palace Hotel and the High Street, 1920.
Image courtesy of Britain from Above.

Vintage aerial photography of Britain

We can help in the creation of this ultimate collection too by sharing memories and knowledge of locations, many photos of which have little or no information attached to them.  One can sign up for free, join groups, annotate pictures and even download them!  This is one of the most magnificent archives I've come across in recent years, deserves to flourish and is possible thanks to Heritage Lottery and other private donations for which we should be inordinately grateful.  Happy browsing!

Britain from the air in times gone by

Britain from the air in times gone by

A splendid series of images from The Daily Telegraph now, which highlights a project currently under way at English Heritage to digitise their extensive collection of pre-war aerial photographs - part of the Aerofilms Collection.

As you will see, these fantastic snap-shots show British landmarks and countryside from a then-new vantage point - with many aspects that today seem somehow familiar and yet at the same time have changed enormously.  In some of them we can see the beginnings of the sprawling urbanisation that is more and more prevalent nowadays and for perhaps the first time we can appreciate on a larger scale just how fresh, open and unspoilt some places once were.  Indeed one of the secondary aims of this Britain From Above project is to observe and compare building expansion and how it affects and has affected the natural surroundings over the decades.

For us it gives us the opportunity to pore over some wonderful vintage pictures, with the promise of yet more to come - 95,000 by 2014! - and think back to those pioneers of flight who instigated the idea and how amazing it must have been for people, like those in the above clip, to fly over places they had only ever seen before from ground level.  These photographs truly did (and do) give a whole new perspective on the British Isles of the 1920s, '30s and '40s.