Architecture Update: Old red kiosks on show

ONLY 10 years ago British Telecom would have looked aghast at the suggestion that it should be protecting its old red telephone kiosks, originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. In 1985, BT argued that the kiosks, such as the K2 and K6 'Jubilee Box', had to be replaced with the dreary, vandal-proof, translucent Kiosk X 100, which it described as designed for 'customers' rather than the public. The national outcry that followed resulted in about 2,300 red telephone kioks being listed as works of historic architecture; and many of the rest were sold to collectors. Next week the BT-sponsored National Telephone Kiosk Collection opens in the Midlands. On show will be the rare K1 of 1922, of which only four remain in service, and the even rarer K7, designed in the Sixties by the architect Neville Conder but never manufactured.

Further details from: Avoncroft Museum of Buildings, near Bromsgrove Worcestershire (0527 831886).