Telephone Kiosk

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A square-plan, freestanding K6 telephone kiosk of cast iron construction, painted red with glazing to three of the elevations and a solid panel to the fourth (E), built to Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's standardised design of 1935 and installed c. 1965. The Killycanavan phone kiosk bears the St Edward’s crown with a slot which dates manufacture to between 1955 and 1968, when the K6 design was discontinued.
The kiosk is situated alongside a free-standing post box in a quiet rural
setting outside number 43 Killycanavan Road, close to the SW shore of Lough Neagh. It has modern Perspex glazing and telephone equipment. While the paintwork is well maintained, aspects of the kiosk are damaged. Its lower leather door strap is broken, the west facing glass signage panel (‘Telephone’) is missing, and it has suffered structural damage; some window mullions and glazing (N) are missing.

Roof: Cast-iron
RWG: None
Walling: Cast-iron, painted
Windows: Single pane with glazing bars

Historical information

The telephone kiosk adjacent to 43 Killycanavan Road near Ardboe dates from c1965 and is first indicated on the large-scale OS map dating from 1975.

The iconic design for the red telephone kiosk, known as K6, was commissioned by the Post Office in 1935 to mark the jubilee of King George V. The design, by celebrated English architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was an adaptation of his original classical design for the earlier K2 (1926). Scott drew inspiration, particularly for the characteristic pendentive roof or ‘handkerchief dome’, from the mausoleum of regency architect, Sir John Soane.

Constructed in cast-iron with a teak door, compact in size and easily mass-produced, the K6 was the most successful and ubiquitous of the phone box designs produced in the 20th century. The K6 was distributed throughout the UK from 1936 with some 60,000 being placed around Britain and Northern Ireland. About 8,000 of these were installed as part of the 'Jubilee Concession' (celebrating 25 years of the reign of George V) announced in April 1935, which allowed towns and villages with a post office to apply for a kiosk. The ‘Tercentenary Concession’(celebrating the Post Office's 300th anniversary) announced in July the same year, enabled local authorities to pay a subscription of £4 a year for five years to install phone boxes in areas where there was no post office and led to around 1,000 further installations. After 1949 these schemes were succeeded by the ‘Rural Allocation scheme’, under which kiosks were placed in out-of-town areas upon the recommendation of a rural authority.

The K6 originally carried a Tudor crown motif derived from the Post Office crest. This was changed to a St Edward’s crown on the ascent of Queen Elizabeth II to the throne, and telephone kiosks after 1953 carry the new motif. The motif was further modified after 1955 when a slot was introduced so that the Queen’s Crown of Scotland could be fitted to Scottish phoneboxes, when necessary. As the Killycanavan phone kiosk bears the St Edward’s crown with the slot, it can be securely dated to between 1955 and 1968, when the K6 design was discontinued.

The date of the kiosk can be further narrowed down by reference to newspaper reports of Council meetings in the 1950s and 60s. In July 1955, Cookstown Rural Council asked the Association of Rural District Councils to recommend to the Post Office that a telephone kiosk should be installed at Killycanavan, beside McGuiggan’s, the home of a dairy farmer. The Post Office authorities were pressed on the matter once again in 1960. However, in 1964, nearly ten years after the recommendation had first been made, no telephone box had been erected and George Forrest, the MP for mid-Ulster was moved to raise the issue in parliament with the Postmaster General (at the time the position was held by Anthony Wedgewood Benn, who responded, in a written reply, that he would obtain the views of the Association of Rural District Councils). It would appear that the phone box at Killycanavan was installed shortly after this, together with the ‘lamp’ post box beside it (so called because they were originally intended to be fixed to lamp posts). The post box bears the insignia of Queen Elizabeth II and is of a design which was produced between 1949 and 1999.

References:
Primary Sources:
1. Mid-Ulster Mail, 4th May 1935, p.10; 16th July 1955, p.7; 20th February 1960, p.3; 28th November 1964, p.10
2. Northern Whig, 1st August 1935, p.7
3. Large-scale OS maps, 1935, 1975
4. Hansard (hansard.parliament.uk) Commons 23rd November 1964

Secondary Sources:
5. Johanssen, N (2011) Telephone Boxes. Oxford: Shire Publications Ltd
6. Linge, N and Sutton, A (2017) The British Phone Box. Stroud: Amberley Publishing
7. Robinson, Martin (2000) Old Letter Boxes. Oxford: Shire Publications Ltd
8. The Telephone Box - http://www.the-telephone-box.co.uk/ (accessed 10 September 2025)
9. GPO - KIOSK No. 6 (K6) - https://www.britishtelephones.com/k6.htm (accessed 10 September 2025)

Evaluation

A pre-1953 K6 model telephone kiosk designed in 1935 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Installed c. 1965, it is not one of the earliest of its kind. It has sustained structural damage with the loss of some glazing mullions, which together with the loss of one of its ‘telephone’ signs and damage to the lower strap renders it not suitable for listing.