Pair of K8 Telephone Kiosks, Princes Avenue at junction with Park Grove, Hull, Avenue, Kingston upon Hull

Summary

K8 telephone kiosk. Designed by Bruce Martin and introduced from 1968.

Description

Two K8 telephone kiosks. Designed by Bruce Martin and introduced from 1968.

MATERIALS: cast iron and aluminium.

DESCRIPTION
The pair of K8 telephone kiosks stand at the junction of Princes Avenue, a wide tree-lined boulevard opened in 1875, and Park Grove to its east. On the opposite side of Princes Avenue is the Methodist Church Tower, Grade II (National Heritage List for England: 1197681).

The kiosks stand back-to-back with the doors facing outward in opposing directions. On the north side is a Mark 1 kiosk with a Mark 2 kiosk on the south side.

The Mark 1 design has a square plan and stands on a concrete base. It is built of six cast iron parts and an aluminium door. Three sides of the kiosk, including the door contain large sheets of toughened glass set in rectangular frames with rounded corners. The rear panel has a blind rectangular frame with rounded corners and below an attached cast iron plaque with the manufacturer’s name CARRON / COMPANY in relief letters. The four sides of the flat roof dome have rectangular framed signage panes with rounded corners glazed with toughened glass, each bearing the word TELEPHONE on a white background. The kiosk is painted cream.

The cream-painted Mark 2 design has a CARRON / COMPANY plaque and is similar in appearance with the exception of the roof dome. The four sides of the flat roof dome have rectangular signage panes with rounded corners, but the frames thicken on the lower edges with concave curves joining the frames at the outer corners of the roof dome.

History

The K8 telephone kiosk was built to a design by Bruce Martin following a competition held by the General Post Office (GPO) in 1965. Bruce Martin (1917-2015) studied engineering at the University of Hong Kong before qualifying in architecture at the Architectural Association and then working for the architectural department at Hertfordshire County Council.

The main requirement within the GPO’s K8 design brief was that it should be easy to re-assemble on site and easy to maintain and repair in the future. It also stated that the kiosk had to last for at least 50 years and that its design had to be recognised as the United Kingdom’s next generation of red telephone boxes. As a result, Bruce Martin analysed Scott’s K6 and meticulously simplified and reduced its high number of components and also made them interchangeable to enable flexible configuration. There was no Royal crown on the kiosk design.

Martin proposed aluminium for construction, but the GPO refused to switch, instead again using cast-iron with the components cast by the Lion Foundry Co Ltd and the Carron Manufacturing Co. An initial order of 1,000 kiosks was commissioned, with the first being installed in Westminster on 12 July 1968. A further 10,000 were installed over the next 15 years. In 1976 one of the manufacturers, Lion Foundry Co Ltd, requested that roof design be modified as they had difficulty in casting this component without cracks appearing. The Mark 1 roof dome was plain with framed signage panels whilst the Mark 2 roof dome had thickened lower edges incorporating the lozenge shaped framing of the signage.

The K8 was the final kiosk produced by the GPO with production ceasing in 1983. Surviving examples are rare as very few were retained by British Telecom following privatisation, though there is a concentration in and around Hull as the independent telephone network in the City of Hull has kept many of their K8s operational.

Hull’s telephone network was initiated with the passing of the Telegraph Act in 1899.
This enabled municipal authorities to establish local telephone systems under licence from the Postmaster General and in competition with the National Telephone Company (NTC), who from 1889 had had almost a monopoly of private company local telephone business. Hull Chamber of Trade pressed the City Council to apply for a licence, which was first granted in 1902. Only five other authorities (Brighton, Glasgow, Portsmouth, Tunbridge Wells and Swansea) actually set up telephone services and all had sold out by 1913.

On 1 January 1912 the Postmaster General took over the NTC and Hull City Council stepped in to buy the NTC’s assets for £192,423, becoming the sole controlling telephone authority in the district, operating its own exchanges and public telephone networks. Over time, it extended its network across the city, mainly with K6 kiosks introduced nationally in 1935, though it also had a smaller number of the K8 kiosks. Hull’s kiosks were always painted cream, rather than the red used elsewhere in the country from the introduction of Giles Gilbert Scott’s K2 kiosk in 1924.

The Council has not had a stake in the network since 2007, which now operates under a private company, trading as KCom, who continue to maintain the kiosks throughout the city and surrounding villages.

Reasons for Listing

The pair of K8 telephone kiosks in Princes Avenue, Hull, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as nationally rare survivals of a once common telephone kiosk, first introduced in 1968;
* Bruce Martin’s meticulously simplified and updated iteration of Scott’s iconic design for the K2 and K6 kiosks was a worthy winner of the General Post Office’s competition for a new kiosk, notable for its modern appearance, easy re-assembly on site and ease of maintenance and repair;
* the kiosks are intact and in good condition, having been maintained in working order.

Historic interest:
* the K8 is the last generation of the “red public telephone box” and as such makes an important contribution to the understanding of the historic development of the telecommunications industry in England before the introduction and subsequent widespread use of mobile phones;
* Hull had the only council-run public telephone network in Britain from the granting of a licence in 1902 until 2007, then continuing to be independently run, its independent status always visually marked by painting the kiosks cream rather than the red used elsewhere;
* this rare pair of kiosks, both manufactured by the Carron Company, represent the original Mark 1 design and the Mark 2 design with a modified roof intended to counteract cracks which could appear when casting the single roof component.

Group value:
* the K8 kiosks are a highly recognisable marker of C20 social history of the nation which make a positive contextual contribution to the historic public realm of Princes Avenue, a wide tree-lined boulevard opened in 1875, and have a strong visual relationship with the Grade II listed Methodist Church Tower.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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