+441595696207, Isle of Foula, 20 Miles West of the Shetland Islands, United Kingdom

This one's nearer to Iceland than it is to London. Kiosk installed in 1956 and never painted since hence the delicate shade of pink! Button A/B box working here until 1994. Both the old telephone exchange (The BT's last public electro-mechanical exchange) and the A/B box preserved by myself (Ian)! It is the only A/B box that I have seen which takes the old 5p and 10 p pieces (other UK decimal A/B boxes take 2p and old 10p pieces).

Ordnance Survey Grid Reference HT 969389 Latitude 60 deg 8 minutes North - Longtitude 2 deg 3 minutes East.

Many thanks to Ian Jolly for the great phone box contribution. I has been luckily retrieved from the old payphone site called payphone_net.


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+441312201994, Great Photography Shot of an Edinburgh Payphone, Scotland, United Kingdom

Really great contribution here by @GarryPlatt via Twitter. Many thanks.

Call Offices

I don't know if you know that the GPO/PO/BT refer to payphones etc as 'Call Offices' dating from the early days of telephones where a person without a telephone would got to somewhere that had a telephone specifically set up for use of people who called in (in the days before kiosks). Most were in the telephone exchange whilst others were in a local shop. The person would go in and the call would be made and the fee collected. These were known as 'attended call offices'. These survived well into modern times ! The last one I know of was 'Rheinigidale 1' on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. This was the UK's last single digit telephone number in use until the early 1990's in a remote croft in a village that could only be reached by sea (a road has since reached the village!). Rheinigidale is spelt in many ways - this OS map has the older Anglicised spelling - Rainigadale

You can listen to an excerpt (from a BBC Radio 4 programme 'The Secret Life of Telephone Numbers' that resulted from the BBC contacting me!) about the Rheinigidale call office on 01859 598 001 (01859 is the code for 'Harris' - probably a free call in the evenings/weekends from your BT phone?)

Regards
Ian
CNet UK 0352 2345

+441465871200, Old Dailly, South Ayrshire, Scotland, United Kingdom

Cobwebs on BT payphone, for this a big thanks to MacMan475

This is one of the many rural payphones which have been converted to the credit/debit card system that charges extortionate rates. This conversion was carried out in recent years as a way to reduce the running cost of BT telephone boxes, and is probably actually cheaper than removing them. Sadly in the age of mobile phones, most rural telephone boxes are no longer used on a regular basis and many look just like this one (which is local to me). It stands disused with some of the glass panels broken or missing, and the "credit card" telephone inside is covered in cobwebs. Who knows how much longer these will be around but we should enjoy them while they last. Thankfully this particular phone box was re-painted in recent years after a long spell of looking very pink and faded.

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