Book Boxes, Phone Ghosts, and a Queen or Two
A casual scroll through the UK phoneboxes - all pictures.
A light piece today while I’m working on a longer piece about foraging and seasonal life here in the UK, I figured I’d share something a little lighter: a quick look at Britain’s red phone boxes—now mostly retired from phone-ing, but very much in use for all sorts of odd and charming purposes.
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TL;DR
Red phone boxes are everywhere here—some hold books, some charge phones, some just smell weird. They’re not mapped or consistent, but I love spotting them. Paired with Sheila’s L’amour au téléphone for that perfect retro phone mood.
While I’m working on a longer piece about foraging and seasonal stuff here in the UK, I figured I’d toss up a quick photo essay of one of my favorite little things we’ve come across: the classic red telephone boxes, repurposed.
An Incomplete Tour of Britain’s Repurposed Phone Boxes
These red kiosks have become everything from mini libraries and art installations to defibrillator stations and yes, even charging stations for more modern phones.
They’re not mapped, generally, and if there’s any logic to their distribution beyond the very few still being used as phonebooks, I don’t know. That could be an interesting project for someone, maybe.
You’ll see these old phoneboxes all over Britain —sometimes painted up, sometimes leaning slightly, but almost always repurposed. Some are now book exchanges, others turned into art installments, community noticeboards, kind of stuff exchanges, solar charging stations (until the panel gets nicked), or just full of random business cards and outdated phone numbers.
A few still have working phones.
Most don’t.
An unsurprising number seem to double as local urinals, officially or not. I guess you could use one to duck out of the rain.
I saw someone doing a Live Video to whoever followed them on whatever platform and she was acting like she was making a call, but with no phone in the box, it all looked a bit weird.
They’re not mapped. Their repurposes are not standardized. And they’re definitely not all functional.
One guy near our current house sit has a phonebox just… in his front garden. For no reason. That happens too.
More coming soon! But I like these and sometimes, it’s just nice to look at pictures.
K
A few other repurpose-ings:
- Mini-libraries / book exchanges: Thousands have been turned into community lending libraries. Over 1,000 in England alone.
- Defibrillator hubs: More than 3,000 kiosks now house AED units.
- Charging units & street hubs: Some have been lightly futuristic—turned into Wi‑Fi/street hubs offering free phone charging and browsing access
- Art and café spaces: A few have are now mini coffee stations, tiny exhibition galleries, or VR arcades, even, which seems both very modern and very dated at the same time.
- ATMs and storage: The ATMs are just kind of shoved in there. I’ve seen some that stored communal garden tools.
Musical accompaniment
L’amour au téléphone (1980)
Just because I have had one of Sheila’s other tracks in my head this week, here’s Sheila’s L’amour au téléphone, the endless re-invented artist’s foray into New Wave from 1980. It’s got some great early 80s sound, plugging into the formula of the era.
She’s channeling a little bit of Blondie, a little bit of Lio (with a laughably suggestive start to that video…), kind of aloof vocals over a drum machine and some knee-dancing. And it’s about love on the phone…
I covered Sheila a while ago. She makes incredibly catchy songs.
Keith Christiansen
