Toads and a Telephone Kiosk

Some of you may recall that M and I volunteered for Toadwatch in Early 2016 and spent a few nights wrapped up against the cold, carrying a torch and a bucket collecting toads to help them across the road to their breeding ponds.  Over 20,500 toads were saved across Norfolk in Winter 2016.  See previous entry:
https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2160518991460697984
Our Toad Watch Organiser and her husband kindly hosted a lunch party in the village of Hempstead today for all us volunteers as a thank you.  We all had a great time, although we had trouble recognising each other as we had previously met in the dark wearing high visibility coats and woolly hats, fleeces and waterproofs...we were slightly less dressed for a sunny afternoon in August!
As we were leaving we noticed this lovely old, traditional phone box in the village.  Such a treat to see one instead of the rather dull grey ones used today.
The red telephone box was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott following a competition in 1924 to find a new design to house public telephones.  The design went through various iterations but the most widespread box is the K6 (Kiosk 6) which was designed in 1935 to commemorate the silver jubilee of King George V.  It went into production in 1936, and was the first box to be extensively used outside London, and thousands were installed in almost every town and city across the UK. In 1935 there had been 19,000 public telephones in the UK. By 1940, thanks to the K6 there were 35,000.


I’m sure there are rather less these days, especially following the popularity of mobile phones!