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Village makes a great call turning phone box into a library

Tuesday 3 January, 2012

By Helen Thomas

A suggestion from a local book club sees a disused phone box given a facelift and a new career.

Following a suggestion by the village book club, a parish council in Derbyshire has converted a run-down red telephone box into a village library.

The idea was put forward by Little Eaton book club organiser Clare Howard, who felt that the book exchange could be a useful addition to the village which lacks its own library.

The phone box was outside of her house in a state of disrepair, but following Ms Howard’s suggestion, the Little Eaton Parish Council bought the telephone box from BT for just £1, repaired the broken windows, and had shelves installed by a local blacksmith.

The shelves were stocked through local donations and Ms Howard told the Derby Telegraph: “In the first week we were a bit worried because all the books disappeared. But by the second and third week, there were large numbers of books being dropped off.”

This is not the first phone box in the UK to undergo a career change.

In 2009, BT ran a competition to find the most innovative use of an adopted red telephone box resulting in a torrent of weird, wonderful and - amazingly - even some practical ideas.

The iconic phone boxes have been turned into art installations, a tourist information centre and even a site for emergency medical treatment, as a life-saving defibrillator was installed in a disused phone box in Scotland.

The first telephone box library appeared in 2009, in the Somerset village of Westbury sub Mendip, and two years later is still going strong.

With phone box usage falling by 80% in the past five years, we could see more and more phone boxes looking for a new lease of life. Does your local area need a book exchange?

Photo by oatsy40