The Sharrington phone box (2025) | The K6 Project / all rights reserved
On the corner of Bale Road in Sharrington, North Norfolk, where birds still sing in the hawthorn and the road runs out towards open country, stands a phone box. The older type, smaller than people usually remember, with panes of glass in iron frames and “Currant Red” paint worn by decades of weather.
One chilly autumn morning, Derek Harris visits the booth and notices something that does not quite belong. A sheet of blue under laminate, taped up with the standard efficiency of a central office. It is from BT, Britain’s largest telecommunications provider:
Notice date: 31/10/24
We’re planning to remove this payphone.
Unfortunately, it just isn’t used enough for us to carry on running it.
If you think it should stay, please contact your local authority within 90 days of the date on this notice.
Call 0800 661 610 (option 1) to find out how to contact your local authority.
The decision sounds settled. Yet this kiosk is the last payphone in a part of Norfolk where mobile coverage drops away without much warning. In places like this, where signal is patchy, and a public phone is still available to walkers, drivers, and older residents, infrequent use is not the same thing as no need.
Derek reads the notice once, then again. He notes the details and takes a photograph. Then he steps back. The first thing he decided was that it wasn’t going to happen.
Back at home, Derek sets a notebook beside the laptop and phone on the kitchen table, near the burnt edges of that morning’s toast. Names are written down carefully, numbers underlined. His jotted comments borrow from his military service, fronts, timings, and positions. From his later working life in management, he also knows that the first task is not indignation but attention. A local object becomes harder to remove once it is no longer merely local.
Derek calls the BBC, and the story is picked up. Clare Worden covers it in the regional news. Then other journalists call. What began with a laminated notice behind panes of aging glass is suddenly being discussed well beyond Bale Road. The village booth becomes an object of national interest.
When I came across this story, some of it was already public, in local reporting, national coverage, parish records, and the campaign’s paper trail. Later, I spoke to Derek and read the correspondence he had kept. It told the story of a small community learning, in a quiet and competent way, to mobilize.
The village starts to move too.
While Derek manages the media logistics, the official record begins its own work. The village shares its parish council with neighboring Brinton, and the two Parish Council minutes set down the event in plain language, one item among many:
“Removal of Public Payphone at Bale Road, Sharrington. BT have placed a notice on the payphone advising of their intention to remove and inviting comments to be sent to North Norfolk District Council.”
Outside, the glass on the red box frosts over as winter arrives.
On a Tuesday in January, the Brinton and Sharrington Parish Council convenes. Coats damp at the shoulders. Folding chairs dragged into straight lines. Printed agendas on laps. The clerk sits at the front, papers stacked, voice level enough to make everything sound manageable.
What appears first in the room is classification. A few phrases are set down with the care one gives to something which might matter later: “K6,” “cherished local scene,” “conservation area,” and “last remaining payphone.”
K6, for Kiosk No. 6, is the 1935 Giles Gilbert Scott design, the one people mean when they picture a red phone box. That matters here, but only to a point. The parish council’s case is not simply that the kiosk is old, handsome, or familiar. It is that it still has a use.
In Sharrington, poor mobile coverage is not a minor concern. The box has been used in emergencies. During a snowstorm, a trapped driver was rescued after a call from the kiosk. The nearby A148 road has seen serious accidents. In a village with older residents and unreliable signal, a working public phone is a form of backup.
There is also a heritage route to protecting the telephone box. The parish council, and Steff Aquarone, the MP for North Norfolk, push for Historic England to grant the kiosk listed status, protecting it as a heritage asset. Other villages, meanwhile, have taken BT’s £1 adoption route and turned old kiosks into libraries, defibrillator cabinets, tiny galleries, and miniature curiosities.
But Derek and the council do not want a red container with the telephone removed. They want the telephone line.
The council agrees to lodge a formal objection. The page is turned, and the meeting continues into other business.
At Derek’s kitchen table, the paper is sorted into piles: media campaign stacked as one process, the parish council’s objection as a second. The listing attempt is there too, running beside them.
A fourth process might be enough to tip the decision.
Online, Derek finds a rule put in place by Britain’s telecommunications authority, Ofcom. He asks John Geddes, a campaigner in Derbyshire who had already seen off a similar attempt to remove a working phone, to assist in the process. John says that BT cannot remove the last public call box at a site if one of several conditions applies. The box may be protected if the area lacks coverage from all four main mobile providers, if it has made at least 52 calls over the past 12 months, if it is near a place with a high frequency of accidents or suicides, or if there is other evidence that it is reasonably needed.
It has taken a lot of time, and a lot of digging into the small print of Ofcom’s paperwork, to find this pressure point.
The village does not need to prove that everyone uses the kiosk every day. It needs to prove that when the network thins out, when weather intervenes, when something goes wrong, the box still belongs to the category of things people may need.
This is where the reach of the MP’s office matters. A letter on headed paper can fix a date, name a place, and make a local effort look official enough to gather people around it. Aquarone’s aide, Charné Jones, helps get the word out.
The case is assembled piece by piece. Call numbers. Letters. Parish minutes. Press coverage. There is the evidence Derek sends to BT and Ofcom; there is the mobile coverage data for the two properties beside the kiosk, showing no signal from two providers and limited service from the others.
And the villagers have absurdity of scale on their side. A corporation speaks in programs, criteria, obligations, and review processes. A village replies with phone numbers in coat pockets.
One Friday morning, March 14, 2025, Sharrington gathers at the kiosk.
For a few chilly hours, people in winter coats and bobble hats stand around the red box. They have no tables, no banner, no loudspeaker. Just cars on a lane that is usually empty, and a queue for a phone box in the age of mobile phones.
The red door opens and closes. Numbers, stored on mobile phones or copied on scraps of paper in coat pockets and handbags, are ready to be dialled. Someone holds the door for the next caller. The handset is lifted, and the old sound is still there, the hum of a line that remains alive.
Derek moves in short arcs along the queue, answering small questions, speaking to the press, and watching the thing take shape without trying to stage-manage it. The event has been helped into being by letters, calls, and publicity, but it belongs to the people who have turned up today.
By midday, the villagers had chalked up about 100 calls. By the close of the day, 50 people, almost half the village population, have placed 146 calls from Kiosk No. 6.
The calls themselves were ordinary. Mainly family, Derek said. Sons, daughters, grandchildren. That ordinary quality was part of the point. The kiosk did not need drama. It needed use.
On March 21, Derek emails with Sophie Matheson at BT. The figures have shifted again. BT has confirmed 85 calls “over the past year,” then 138. At the MP’s office, Charné Jones responds to the update with an enthusiasm that steps outside of bureaucracy:
“Wow the numbers are fantastic as of yesterday!!”
Derek follows up with BT and Ofcom. He cites the weak mobile signal. He cites the ambulance crew that needed the kiosk when it could not get a mobile signal. He cites the two adjacent properties. He cites the annual call threshold. He cites the public response.
Then, on March 21, the reply comes through:
“After a thorough review, we have decided not to proceed with the removal of the payphone. Given the poor mobile service in the area and the significant number of calls made from this payphone, it is clear that it serves an important function for the community. Therefore, we are withdrawing it from the removal programme for these reasons.”
A few days later, in the village hall, thanks are paid in calm procedural words. Derek’s name appears in the minutes. The district councilor and the MP are noted for their support. The wider attention the story received is acknowledged as a surprising side note.
The heritage case continues, because victory in one system does not guarantee victory in another. Historic England declines to list the kiosk; Brinton and Sharrington Parish Council’s minutes record the failure of an appeal.
The case for the kiosk’s utility has held. That does not mean it will never need making again. The parish record marks the ongoing obligation: “Parishioners are urged to continue making calls.”
Derek plans ahead. He asks BT that the kiosk to be properly cared for. The door has rotted. The colour has faded. The gilded Tudor crowns must not be overpainted. He writes to Sophie Matheson, praising her effectiveness before explaining that the gilt crowns are intrinsic to the beauty of the original design.
BT’s engineers inspect the telephone box. A replacement door is organised. The crowns are kept gold. The box is repainted. New brass hinges are fitted.
Even the biggest organizations, Derek observes, “all comprise human beings.”
But maintenance is not only paint, hinges, and glass. The calls must continue. The parish council must keep an eye on the figures. The line must remain a line. A red box on a quiet lane, and a community keeping it in use.
Recently, I called it myself. It still rings.
