K6 Telephone Box

My newly refurbished K6 in October 2013, a month after getting it, and in September 2023.

What

A restored K6 Telephone Box.

Why

I think the K6 Telephone Box is iconic. It looks great. It’s like a beacon. I’d wanted one for quite a while and did occasionally at look at costs of them. I also considered making a replica from wood. It wouldn’t have worked well though..

When

September 2013.

A montage of Telephone Box images I made to go in the Telephone Box.

1. The Kiosk was originally in Nelson, Lancashire until some time between 1992 and 1995.
2. My Telephone Box was acquired in September 2013 from a garden in Brighouse.
3. The Box’s new home in Rothwell.

Development & Progress

Not especially important, but just for context. The bottom of my drive getting some hedges removed in 2006.
It was often a neglected dumping ground until 2013.
Starting to prepare an area for the Telephone Box I’d bought but hadn’t been able to retrieve yet.

A retaining wall for the remaining front hedge.

Some more wall building
An almost finished area for the Telephone Box to live on.
The K6 Box in its previous owner’s ex wife’s garden.
I spent many hours with a pick axe and sledge hammer to only get this minor amount out of the concrete base.
A week later I had to hire a concrete breaker and power convertor thing and it made light work of the stubborn thick concrete.

I hired some blokes with pulleys and a flat bed truck to help shift and transport it.
It was a risky move, but we anchored the tackle to a stone outhouse with some bits of board to spread the load.
We all slid the telephone box on boards around to the front of the house. No easy or quick task.

The Telephone Box being lowered onto my drive. I hoped it wouldn’t break the cast iron whilst doing this.
The K6 safely in its new home location. I was already very pleased with this.
Work on removing broken panes and reducing flaky paint etc. on the door.

A new coat of paint after lengthy removal of the the internal pane frames that were all pinned/riveted in place
The door attached . Intact door glass was masked for painting.
Some of the wide laminated glass panes I had cut to size. These were siliconed into the box, unlike the originals that were secured with iron frames, rivets and putty

The old TARDIS plastic lightbox signs were trimmed down and used to sandwich laser printed “TELEPHONE” graphics.
The signs in place. The “TELEPHONE” graphic required some tweaks, as the font used seemed to have minor differences to what might have been hand created back in 1935.

I was very fortunate to get many fixtures and fittings with the Telephone Box in addition to the door and shell.
I was lucky enough to get the backboard and shelf and an original notice. The notice gave me specific information on the former location of the box, in Nelson, Lancashire.
I bought some snap frames and put in my own notices with the montage, an advert for Albany Design, a map and also a random Alpine scene tapestry I found near a bin or something, for no good reason.
Having a beer in my new prized possession. I had a plant in the telephone Box for a year or two.

I thought it would be a sensible responsible idea to include a map giving details of the nearest public telephone in case some one needed one. I also included a welcome message and some box facts.
Shortly after completing the box I used it to feature a hanging body for Halloween. This photo also shows the concrete footing I poured for the box base.
A local PCSO (that also used to be my manager around 1999), posing with the box

Later / Current Status

Repainting the Crown on the back in an unusual way in 2018 to avoid having to go take a ladder round to the neighbour’s garden.

It’s always cheerful to see the box filled with LED lights at Christmas. This was how it looked in 2019.
Christmas 2020.
Sometimes people will stop and take photographs of this.

Addition of a Payphone 600 unit

In January 2023 I bought a decomissioned payphone 600 that was prevalent in the 80s and 90s and can still be found in some telephone boxes today.

It doesn’t work, but I think it adds something special to the authenticity of the box as a whole. I also like the design of the Payphone 600 unit.
I modelled and 3D printed a cashbox and installed it to complete the look.

Addition of prop directories and cards

Real vintage directories are now very rare or cost a small fortune on eBay. In June 2024 I decided to make some fake telephone directories from plywood.

I found some photo of directories on eBay and corrected the image distortions. Then I meticulously reproduced the covers in accurate detail. However, there was one glaring anachronism. The rear cover of the Yellow pages features an advert with a website, but the front is based on a 1992 directory. The real advert from the 1992 directory was much more complicated and ugly than the one I used from a few years later.
The prop directories in place. hese add a nice splash of colour to the interior.
Less “vital” than the directories, but for some amusing authenticity I decided to make some sex industry calling cards. I’d already made some of these a few years ago for a silly pointless project but now I had a sort of actual use for them. I adapted them to have my face on and I made some additional changes. The telephone number isn’t live, as it’s from a range reserved by OFCOM for use by Film and TV productions.

The new additiins in place. The lamp and digital clock aren’t authentic of course,. but the light from the lamp is much warmer and cosier looking than the ceiling lamp. I used to have an analogue clock in there but I got fed up of changing the batteries or the mechanism failing in the heat etc.

Tel-bo Disco

June 2023 finally saw me getting round to having a one-man disco in the kiosk. It featured a laser light, fog machine and lava lamp etc.

My favourite music was played from an old phone I use just for music to a blue tooth speaker built into the lava lamp.
The 3D printed cash box was used for safely stowing drinks when I was dancing about.

Telephone Kiosk Facts

Kiosk 1, designed by Somerville & Co. 1920
Kiosk 2, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott. 1924
Kiosk 3, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott. 1927
Kiosk 4, designed by the Post Office. 1927
Kiosk 5, designed by the Post Office. 1934
Kiosk 6, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott. 1935
Kiosk 7, designed by Neville Conder. 1959
Kiosk 8, designed by Bruce Martin. 1968

K6 telephone boxes, were manufactured in Scotland from 1935 onwards. My model would’ve been made sometime between 1952 and 1968.

K6 kiosks weigh 750kgs (14.25 CWT / 3/4 ton / 1653 lbs).
They are 2m 54cm high by 91cm2 (8’ 4” high by 3’ 2).

5 Comments

  3. I did my GCSE Graphical Communication project on the history of the public telephone box in about 1989. I don’t think it was as interesting as your webpage but I did get an A <>. Brilliant website. Thanks for sharing.

  4. How interesting to see what others have done with their K6s, thanks for posting! I’ve spent the weekend erecting a K6 in my garden and I’m looking forward to changing the interior as the seasons change.

  5. I have had a K6 since 1989. It has moved house with me 4 times (flat packed into a Transit) and been repainted 3 times (Dr Who blue for about a decade). It originally came from Dudley and is now near Bristol. There are at least 3 others in private hands in my town. I have done most of the things you did to get it from vandalised street condition to smart

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