Brush trams at Crich

After living in the area for oh so many years, I finally got a chance to visit the tramway museum at Crich. True, I’ve previously visited the Black Country Living Museum, Blists Hill, and Beamish, and even ridden the trams in San Francisco, but I’d never made it to Crich! Goodness me, what a lot I’ve missed over the years!!

Now, I’d heard talk about, and seen photographic proof that an iconic part of the Brush was held in the Crich museum collection, but boy was I shocked when I saw it!

Before this, we’d wandered down to Town End, taking note of the interesting street furniture, oohing and ahhing over the Red Lion, and we’d managed to bypass the ice cream stall (the weather was far too cold!), but did pop into the sweet shop for a quarter of dolly mixtures. We stepped into the Eagle Press works, stopped to admire the police box (a Mark II, designed by Gilbert Mackenzie), and the bundy clock, then crossed over to see the K1 telephone kiosk (I’ve never seen one before!), touched the slate tiles on the roof of a low building, and admired the Belliss and Morcom reciprocating engine and generator.

My first sighting of a K1! (1)

Police box

A Lucy Box for trams (2)

We had a look at the exhibitions in the original Derby Assembly Rooms, and then sauntered back to the tram stop, and joined a queue for a tram ride. Well, there was a very big group of people who were having their photograph taken, posing in front of a tram, so we thought we’d have to wait for the next one, but for some reason they didn’t get on themselves, so there was plenty of room for us up top! We got talking to a chap who lived locally, and visited regularly, and he was thrilled to be on this particular tram, as, apparently it doesn’t come out very often!

We stayed on the tram all the way up as far as it went that day (the Sherwood Foresters Regiment Memorial was not accessible on the day we visited), and then took it back as far as the woodland walk stop, where we alighted and examined the exhibits like the mine entrances, and then took the woodland walk back towards Town End. On the woodland walk we saw lots of wood carvings, and many sculptures, and had a wonderful view out over Derbyshire.

View over Derbyshire

The monument

The woodland walk library!

The request stop

We passed the wonderful bandstand that had originally been in Longford Park, Stretford, Manchester, a lovely drinking fountain, a VR wall box, and then popped into the café for lunch – one of the few places left that serves a baked potato with coronation chicken!! Refreshed, we crossed over the tracks to the long row of tram sheds, most of which were open! We spent ages walking up and down in between the rows of trams in each shed, admiring the livery, the lovely colours, the beautiful shapes, and seeing just so many different features. Wow, I thought this was great, and then we went into the big exhibition hall …

Water fountain (3)

The VR wall box (4)

The Penfold letter box

I was reminded of my recent trip to the Transport Museum in London, but actually, having been able to ride on the tram, and not just walk around reading information boards, and stepping into static train carriages, made Crich really rather exciting!

Anyway, back to the big hall … I’d asked my partner to let me know if he spotted a falcon anywhere, which I believed might be somewhere in the hall. We split up and I was immediately attracted to the rows of trams on my left, and did my usual organised circular walk around the exhibits around the outside. Then I bumped into the hubby, who asked if I’d seen ‘the eagle’ yet, and was surprised I hadn’t and said ‘You can hardly miss it!’ And I turned to look into the middle of the room, there it was, this flippin’ enormous goldy-brown falcon, with its wings outstretched, perched on a box, as if guarding the machinery which stretched out in a big circle around it!! The ‘Brush budgie’ was hardly a budgie, it was huge!! Nor was it blue!!

Railings outside the new housing on the site of the original Falcon Works, Derby Road

To be honest, walking around the exhibition hall, and previously around the tram sheds, I was truly amazed at the number of things that the Brush had been involved with, and so pleased that we could still see them today. Some of the model trams that people had made were pretty spectacular, too, and some of them were of Brush trams. On the way out we spotted the book sale, so of course, came away with a handful of short reads – not all for us, I hasten to add!!

Our last stop was into the workshop viewing gallery, where they were working on repairing and renovating tram bodies, and where we learned more about the Brush who supplied Chesterfield with some of its trams. The smell in the workshops was amazingly evocative of childhood days! Then we passed into the Stephenson Discovery Centre, where, amazingly, we saw mention of the Leicester and Swannington railway!

After all this excitement, we again boarded the tram, and travelled all the way from Town End, to the end of the line and back again, just for the fun of it! We finished off our visit with another cup of tea in the Red Lion pub!

What a day!!

When we got home, I had a look to see which trams we'd actually travelled on, and was so pleased to find that the museum had listed them on their Facebook page, and describes them in detail on the website! 

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Notes

(1) A little bit more about telephone kiosks on an earlier blogpost

(2) More on Lucy boxes on an earlier blogpost

(3) More about Loughborough's drinking fountain on an earlier blogpost

(4) More on wall boxes on an earlier blogpost  

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2024). Brush trams at Crich. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/04/brush-trams-at-crich.html [Accessed 28 April 2024]

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Loughborough's K6 telephone kiosk

Brief history of the telephone kiosk

There were several versions of the telephone kiosk created, ranging from the K1 released in 1912, through to the K8 created in 1968, to the KX100, the last to be designed in the 1980s.

The Grade II listed telephone kiosk at Loughborough railway station is of the K6 variety, and was made by the Carron Company of Stirlingshire, who were also responsible for many of the letter boxes that can still be found around the country [1].

Initially, telephone kiosks weren’t standardised, and early ones were sometimes made of wood, and looked like garden sheds! A company called the National Telephone Company (NTC) began the process of trying to standardise the kiosk design, and they created three models: the Birmingham, the Norwich, and the Wilson. Then, around 1912 the General Post Office (GPO) took over from the NTC and successfully standardised the kiosks, and began the numbering of the designs, starting with the K1, which started to appear around 1920. However, this K1 design, which had three concrete panels and a wooden door, a pyramid roof, sometimes thatched, is probably very unlike the ubiquitous red telephone kiosks like ours at Loughborough railway station.

For some reason, the K1 design wasn’t very popular and so in 1924, the GPO held a competition for a new design. The competition was won by Giles Gilbert Scott, grandson of Sir George Gilbert Scott who was responsible for Victorian renovations to many churches. The competition winner was knighted that same year after the consecration service at the new Liverpool Cathedral which he had designed, but which wasn’t completed until 1980. The new K2 kiosk was made of cast iron with a wooden door, had a domed roof and was painted red! However, the kiosk was large and expensive, and really only took off in London, so Giles Gilbert Scott then designed the K3, introduced in 1929.

The K3 was smaller than the K2 and was made from concrete. It was painted in cream, with the metal frames of the glass panels – of which there were 6 rows of three equal sized ones in each of the three glazed sides – highlighted in red. However, the K3 design only lasted for about six years, until about 1935, as the box tended to be rather brittle.

The K4 telephone kiosk, was designed by the Engineering Department of the General Post Office, and its production overlapped with that of the K3. Essentially, the kiosk followed the design of Gilbert Scott’s K2, but was constructed from cast iron, and had a stamp dispensing machine as its rear ‘wall’, so it was very large, and had to be placed so access could be gained from all four sides. The kiosk was painted entirely red, and had six rows of three panes of equal sized glass panes. However, the K4 was not hugely successful, partly due to the noise of the stamp machine which interfered with telephone conversations, the stamp machine not being waterproof, and the kiosk generally being overly large – and nicknamed the ‘Vermillion Giant’ – and only about 50 were ever produced.

The K5 can hardly be said to have been any more successful than the K4, and in fact, it never actually reached full-scale production. Had it gone into full production, the kiosk would probably be made from concrete, however, the design only ever reached the metal-faced plywood stage. In a design change from the earlier kiosks, the K5 was not fully glazed on the three normally glass sides, but had a window of two rows by two columns, rather like a house window.

Our K6 telephone kiosk

And so we come to the K6 kiosk, which is the design outside the Midland Mainline station at Loughborough. Although it looks perfectly normal, it does strike me as being a little odd because I would have expected the door to be on the front so when opened the dail and handset etc. are straight in front of you, but strangely, the door is actually on one of the sides, so you have to sidle up to the wall to get in! (see pic below). And I've just discovered why this is! In 1939, the K6 design was modified, resulting in a Mark 2 with several new versions:

Mk2 - K6A - the door is fitted opposite the back panel and is hinged, and therefore opens, to the left

Mk2 - K6B - the door is fitted opposite the back panel and is hinged, and therefore opens, to the right

Mk2 - K6C - the door is fitted as the lefthand side panel and is hinged, and therefore opens, to the left

Mk2 - K6D - the door is fitted as the righthand side panel and is hinged, and therefore opens, to the right

Interestingly, this kiosk is still in use as a telephone, but its original rotary handset and coin buttons (A for money in, B for returned coins) have been replaced. You can just about see the number punchpad through the glass on the first picture below:

What the inside would have originally looked like

There were originally detailed instructions on how to use the telephone, as well as a list of all the dialling codes, mounted inside the kiosk.

Instructions for use!

The K6 is really the one which came to be the iconic ‘red telephone box’ that we know today. It was designed in 1935, in celebration of the silver jubilee of King George V, who had come to the throne in 1911. The K6 was another box designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, who had designed the earlier boxes. The K6 was commissioned by the General Post Office, and 8,000 jubilee boxes came to our streets in jubilee year, 1936, sited in the towns and villages that actually had a Post Office.

These K6 boxes were mounted on a concrete base, and were rectangular in shape, being made of cast-iron sections (except for the door which is actually made from teak) that are bolted together. Each piece of the kiosk is numbered, perhaps to ensure that each piece was attached during construction 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.

The front pediment, above the door, bears a moulded St Edward’s crown. Since the K6 was produced until 1968, and as Queen Elizabeth favoured the use of the St Edward’s Crown over the Tudor Crown, kiosks produced since 1953 bear the St Edward’s Crown. This helps us to date the railway station K6 kiosk as having been produced between 1953 and 1968.

1937 was the 300th anniversary of the Post Office, and in celebration of this another 1,000 K6 boxes were installed over a period of 12 years, provided that the local authority paid a subscription of £4 over a 5-year period. Sadly, the original K6 was prone to being damaged, so a Mark II was developed and introduced in 1939, a design which was slightly more damage resistant.

Having said that the red K6 is iconic and familiar, in 1949, some rural boxes were painted in different colours, and some later ones in green and battleship grey. Over time, the K6 began to look dated, and production stopped, by which time - 1968 - around 60,000 boxes of the K6 design had been installed.

The moulded crown on the domed roof of the kiosk was originally painted in red, but since the early 1990s, in recognition of the heritage value of the iconic red telephone kiosk, British Telecom have highlighted the crown in gold paint. Ours is still red, however (see pic above).

In the late 1950s, the General Post Office began to consider a new design for the telephone kiosk, and initially chose a design for the new K7 by Nevill Conder, which was a square affair, intended to be constructed from aluminium and glass. However, the K7 never entered full-production, and only about a dozen prototypes were produced. This was mostly because aluminium became discoloured and stained in the British climate, making the K7 quite unsuitable.  Enter the K8 …

The K8 was designed by Bruce Martin, but rather than using aluminium as he suggested, the K8 was constructed of cast-iron sections which were bolted together, and mounted on a concrete base that was slightly narrower than the kiosk itself. The kiosk was three-quarter glazed on three sides, is rectangular in shape, and is painted red. In all, around 11,000 K8 kiosks were installed across the country.

When British Telecom took over the public telephone network from the General Post Office in 1985, a new kiosk, the KX100, was introduced. Its frame was made from aluminium, which was clad with stainless steel panels, the back panel which reached the ground, being made from stainless steel, and the other three sides, which didn’t quite reach the ground, and provided ventilation, were made of glass, and included a ‘modesty panel’.  Further variations of the KX100 – the KX100+ - having a domed roof, appeared between around 1996, which offered the customer the option of either paying for their call using cash or card, and also offering access to the internet. By 1999, there were just under 150,000 KX100 and its variants in existence.

Today, as people move to using mobile telephones, thus reducing the need to have a public telephone kiosk on every street, many of these public telephone kiosks have been, and are being converted. Popular conversions include use as a housing for defibrillator equipment, small libraries or book exchanges, tourist information kiosks, museums, or even small coffee vending machines!

A K6 in use as a tiny library near Carn Brea, Cornwall [2]

A K6 with a gold crown, in use as a defibrillator in Melton

News of a Leicester hero being celebrated in a tiny K6 museum in Hereford!

And here are some KX100s in Loughborough - the one on Cattle Market and those outside the Sparrow Hill post office.

More about the architect

Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960) grew up on a farm in Sussex, and attended a Jesuit school in Windsor.  Giles was the son of architect George Gilbert Scott (jnr.), and grandson of Sir George Gilbert Scott the Victorian architect mostly remembered for his renovation of churches. The latter was involved in the re-ordering and renovation of our own parish church, and along with W. Bonython Moffatt, also designed Loughborough’s Union Workhouse on Regent Street.

Giles’ mother was keen that he also followed the family tradition and encouraged him into the world of architecture. He was articled to the architectural firm of Temple Moore, and at the age of only 22 he won the competition to design the new cathedral at Liverpool. As Giles was a Roman Catholic, the competition committee assigned a joint architect, G. F. Bodley, but Bodley died 4 years into the build, and Giles was able to modify the original design. Liverpool Cathedral was not completed until 1980, so Giles didn’t get to see the completion of is design.

Giles was knighted in 1924, and was President of the Royal Institution of British Architecture (RIBA) for a time. Some of his other designs include religious buildings, like the Catholic Cathedral in Oban; the chapel at Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey, and the church for Ampleforth College. While his secular buildings include Chester House in Clarendon Place, London; Waterloo Bridge; the library for Clare College, Cambridge; the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and Battersea Power Station, which, rather like the red telephone box, is an iconic structure!

It is interesting to note that the website maintained by the Gilbert Scott family has as its logo, a red telephone box!

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Notes

[1] I wrote a series of posts about those iconic letter boxes in October and November 2022. Here's the list:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

The case of the Burton Street box

Unusual and unreal letter boxes!

[2] Another connection with Loughborough is that the manufacturer, John Heathcoat, who took his lacemaking business to Tiverton in Devon after the Luddite riots, opened another factory in 1934, this time in Carn Brea - see picture below.

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2024). Loughborough's K6 telephone kiosk. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/02/loughboroughs-k6-telephone-kiosk.html [Accessed 18 February 2024]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne