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Appeal for photos from phone box's village past

Katy Prickett
News imageGreg Horsford A red phone box standing in the corner of a garden against an ivy clad wall. The phone box looks in pristine condition after being refurbished. Greg Horsford
The phone box was once in use in Little Eversden, Cambridgeshire

The new owner of a red telephone box is appealing for photographs of when it was in use.

Greg Horsford has fulfilled a long-held desire to own one of the iconic boxes, which he was told originally came from Little Eversden, Cambridgeshire.

The retired police officer posted pictures of it being installed in his garden in Ickwell, near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire on a village social media site.

"If there are any pictures showing the box in the village prior to it being removed, I would be delighted to see them," he said.

News imageGreg Horsford A red phone box being craned into a garden over an ivy clad wall. The delivery driver is standing beside the phone box looking up at it as it dangles in mid air. Behind the wall is a lorry cab roof and another red phone box can just be glimpsed. Greg Horsford
The cast iron telephone box had to be craned into place in Greg Horsford's garden

The 57-year-old also posted photographs of the refurbished phone box being craned into his garden on the Haslingfield & Harlton Facebook group, thinking it would spark memories for people in nearby Little Eversden.

Horsford said: "I've always liked the phone boxes - so I went to a company in Newark that refurbishes them, strips them down, sand-blasts and repairs them.

"My wife's from Durham and I'm from Bedfordshire, so initially I asked if they had a phone box from either area; they said they had one from Cambridgeshire and I was born in Cambridge so I said, that would be great."

Little Eversden is about 20 miles (32km) from Ickwell.

The phone box is one of the K6 designs, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of the coronation of King George V in 1935.

About 60,000 of this type were installed across Britain between 1935 and 1968.

Just a few thousand remain, with some transformed into visitor information centres or museums.

Villagers in Sharrington, near Holt in Norfolk, recently saved their phone box from being disconnected in an area where mobile phone signal is poor.

Horsford has memories of using the phone box in the village he grew up in.

"Sometimes the phone would just be ringing for no reason, you'd answer and someone would ask to speak to Peggy Wheatly and you'd have to run off and get her," he said.

"People didn't have telephones at home, so you'd just call the village phone box."

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