Whole new chapter as telephone box put to novel use

But one Yorkshire village which has gradually seen virtually all its facilities disappear is about to open its own new service.

The Green Moor lending library will admittedly be a modest endeavour, housed in a telephone kiosk that was recently taken out of use by BT.

However, it is expected to be a triumph for community spirit when it is stocked with books and used for other community services.

Green Moor, on the edge of the Pennines between Sheffield and Barnsley, has gradually seen its public amenities disappear over recent decades.

The school closed in the 1980s, its shop is no more than a distant memory and the site of The Rock pub, which had once been popular with locals and visiting walkers, has been standing vacant for the last four years and is expected to be redeveloped for housing.

Its telephone kiosk, once a lifeline when it was unusual for residents and farmers to have their own connection, was also put out of use through lack of custom.

The village still has Hunshelf Parish Council to protect its welfare and it was able to secure the traditional red phone box for just £1 in a deal with BT, although privately purchased examples can go for much higher sums.

Although it was in a dilapidated state by then, it has been renovated and will accommodate a selection of adult and children’s literature, all provided by the local community.

Plans for the kiosk go further, however, and it is hoped it will become a focal point for the village residents and visitors alike.

In the last few days, a selection of leaflets with local information and routes for walkers have been made available. It is hoped they will be joined by a notice board and even a “freecycle” service.

This has become popular on the internet, allowing people to give away serviceable goods which might otherwise end up being thrown away, although in Green Moor the service will be run in the old-fashioned way via a notice board.

Even before the kiosk was ready for use, a “librarian” had been appointed to ensure the unstaffed facility is kept in good order.

Angela Fox is a retired schoolteacher who lives on a nearby farm.

As a child, her family relied on the public telephone there if they needed to make a call.

She has volunteered to take on the new role at the site and said: “I’m not on the parish council but attend meetings and said that if they needed someone to keep an eye on it and maintain it, then I would take that role on.

“We have lost the pub, school and shop in the village years ago and we have become a fragmented village. It is almost like a dormitory village now,” she said.

“We are losing the vibrancy of the area.

“Other people had the idea to use the phone box and I said I would make sure we didn’t get too many books in there.

“We have not finished sorting out the details yet, like how long we will keep books before they go off to charity shops,” she said.

Parish Councillor Barry Tylee said the kiosk was alongside a village garden, which has just been given a make-over with new seating, so was ideally placed.

“There are also a couple of information boards with details about the industrial heritage of the area, like quarrying,” he said.

The remote location of the village means the kiosk is not expected to be troubled by vandalism.

Hunshelf Parish Council clerk David Horsfall added: “We are very pleased that Angela has volunteered for the librarian’s job because she will be ideal for it.

“We bought the kiosk for the bargain price of £1 from BT because they are selling for as much as £1,000 and it is retaining it for community use.”

Hunshelf Parish Council is a tiny organisation, with only five councillors and an annual income of £3,500 from its parish precept, raised alongside the usual council tax by Barnsley Council, and is responsible to fewer than 300 voters in the area.

British tradition gets a makeover

As the rise of mobile telephones continues, falling demand means payphones on the street have become an increasingly rare feature.

But the traditional red telephone boxes are as much a part of the British landscape as village greens and some will live on in new guises.

Other enterprising bodies have found alternative uses for boxes which might otherwise have been removed and sold off.

They include the village of Draughton, in the Yorkshire Dales, which set up a “shop” in its old kiosk because two years after it closed residents were missing the local store.

It was serviced by a shopkeeper in Skipton who introduced a system of telephone orders and payments, leaving goods for villagers to collect at their convenience.