Council objects to removal of several public telephone boxes in Daventry district

The communications giant contacted the authority proposing to remove eight modern payphones – in Byfield, Brixworth, Creaton and Whilton Locks; in Station Road and Market Place in Long Buckby; and at The Cherwell and Trafalgar Way in Daventry.

But the council has said it would agree to proposals to remove the telephone equipment from a traditional red K6 box on Main Street in Cottesbrooke – but only if the local community goes ahead with plans to adopt the box to use it for other purposes. If local people could not come up with a plan to retain it however, then the district council would object to the BT proposals.

The red K6 phone boxes were designed by the architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and were produced in 1935 to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V.

BT has also been ‘strongly urged’ to agree to a request by the parish council in Byfield to replace the modern box on The Green with a traditional box design ‘to help retain the historic look of the village’.

The response was agreed at a meeting of Daventry District Council’s strategy group on Thursday (October 15), with Councillor David Smith saying: “We are objecting to the removal of these boxes. The K6 boxes have been around since 1935. In more recent times you would have seen around various villages, such as Weedon, where it is now a book exchange. And you may have seen there are some villages where they have made them a seed exchange.”

The most well used of the telephone boxes was the one in Station Road in Long Buckby. It was used 71 times in the 12 months leading up to October 2019, when figures were last collated prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.