Thanks to our volunteer Lynne, for researching and writing about this object.
The iconic red telephone kiosk stands proudly in the 'Rural Gallery' in the Melton Carnegie Museum.
The first telephone kiosk, the K1, was introduced in 1912, and the boxes went through a series of designs and re-designs until the latest ones produced in the late twentieth-century. Colours have ranged from white in the early days, through the iconic red versions, to the latest metal and glass versions.
The K6 was commissioned by the General Post Office, and designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, in celebration of the silver jubilee of King George V, who had come to the throne in 1911. Giles Gilbert was the grandson of Sir George Gilbert Scott, the architect of many church restorations, including that of Melton's St Mary's in 1865-9. The K6 was in production from 1936 to 1968, and ours can be dated from the moulded crown which adorns the pediment: this is the Tudor Crown, which was used until 1953, when Queen Elizabeth II adopted the St Edward's Crown, thus our box was probably made between 1936 and 1953. A staggering 8,000 K6 boxes were installed on streets across the country in 1936.
The K6 boxes were usually mounted on a concrete base, and were rectangular in shape, being made of cast-iron sections bolted together. Each piece of the kiosk is numbered, perhaps to ensure that each piece was attached to the right piece! Three of the four sides of the box are glazed, with 8 rows of glass on each side, and each side having a larger glass panel sandwiched between two small panels. The box has a domed roof and a teak door, which has a metal cup-shaped handle. A foundry plate, showing the name of the company that made the box – in our case, the Carron Company of Stirlingshire - can be found on the back of the box, towards the bottom.
Inside the kiosk you can see the original rotary handset and the coin buttons - A for money in, B for returned coins, if there was no answer at the other end, of if you didn't use up all your money on the call. There are also detailed instructions on how to use the telephone, as well as a list of all the dialling codes for the country, mounted inside the kiosk.
Today, many K6 boxes have been re-purposed, so you might find some now operating as small libraries or book exchanges, or tourist information centres, museums, or even small coffee-vending machines!
If you who would like to see a K6 telephone box actually in its original location, head out of the museum along Sherrard Street, turn left into Burton Street, and on the right-hand side, close to the Crown public house, there stands a K6! However, it is not just a K6, it is a modified K6, so a M2, K6C, which has a door fitted on the lefthand side of the kiosk panel, and is hinged, and therefore opens, to the left, and which was made post-1939. Furthermore, the kiosk no longer in use as a telephone box, but like so many today has been converted to house a defibrillator. The kiosk bears a gold painted moulded St Edward Crown, indicating that it was made post-1953. This wonderful K6 appears on the Historic England Register of listed buildings, at Grade II level, and was first added to the Register on 8 October 1987.
