Classic phone box given new lease of life as school library

A classic cream Hull phone kiosk has been given a new lease of life by an East Yorkshire school.

The distinctive K6 phone box has been winched into place at Welton Primary School playground this week where it began its new life as a community library.

Lowered in over a hedge by a giant crane, while pupils cheered it on from a safe distance, the phone box will now be filled with books for the children to browse at playtime and for the wider community to enjoy.

Welton Primary School head teacher Nikki Pidgeon said: “At Welton we’re passionate about our curriculum that aims to ensure that our unique, local heritage drives our learning.

“We wanted to promote a reading culture that encompasses the whole of the Welton family and find a very special way to make this happen.

“We researched how we might do this, while at the same time promoting locality, community and heritage. We knew we wanted to provide a Welton Family library, with an emphasis on adults, based on a community book swap idea.

“The idea of a traditional, Hull cream phone box being the home for this library was very exciting for us, we couldn’t believe it when we contacted KCOM and it very quickly became a possibility. Today the journey has started with the delivery of a very smart K6 phone box, cheered on by the pupils.”

KCOM engineering manager Nick Jackson said: “We’re delighted that we’re able to reuse one of our classic K6 boxes and give it a new lease of life that will be enjoyed by generations of children to come.

“When we heard from Welton Primary about their fantastic idea to turn the kiosk into a something that would encourage its pupils’ love of learning and reading we jumped at the chance.

“As a company that’s at the heart of the local community it’s great that a piece of our unique heritage will continue to benefit so many people.”

The classic K6 kiosk design was commissioned in 1936 to commemorate the silver jubilee of King George V.

It was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and became the first red telephone kiosk to be used extensively outside London with many thousands deployed in virtually every town and city across the country.

Originally, in the early 1900s, phone boxes across the country used to be all sorts of colours, red, green, cream etc. But to mark George V’s silver jubilee the GPO, which ran the phone network then, decided to paint all theirs red to match their post boxes.

The same kiosks were installed in Hull but in keeping with the city’s contrary nature, the phone boxes were given a cream paint finish.