New lease of life for Sussex village telephone boxes

Two of the iconic phone boxes, once a common sight in towns and villages across West Sussex, have been bought by Plaistow and Ifold Parish Council for the benefit of the community.

One of the K6-style boxes, bought from BT for £1 as part of their ‘adopt a kiosk scheme,’ has recently been transformed from a dilapidated redundant phone box to a fully renovated kiosk that now houses a life-saving defibrillator.

The kiosk - on the corner of The Drive and Plaistow Road in Ifold - was meticulously renovated by Ralph Restorations, a small West Sussex company which specialises in the restoration and repair of historic items of street furniture.

Ralph Restorations spent many days stripping the whole kiosk back to bare metal to reveal the original detail before fully repainting and re-glazing it.

Now restored and watertight, the kiosk has been fitted out with one of the latest semi-automatic defibrillators, which is being cared for by Billingshurst Emergency Assistance Team (BEAT) - a group of local volunteer Community First Responders who are trained, monitored, and deployed by South East Coast Ambulance Service.

BEAT regularly check the equipment, ensuring that the batteries are charged, the pads are in date and the defibrillator is ‘rescue ready’.

In the event of deployment, the team’s contact details are attached to the defibrillator so that BEAT can be contacted to check the equipment after use and supply new pads and battery as required.

Plaistow and Ifold Parish Council chairman Alan Pearson said: “We are delighted that we have been able to give this iconic phone box a new lease of life using money that has been made available to us by Chichester District Council to support locally identified, parish led projects.

“This phone box has been part of our community since 1959. It will now remain a vital, life-saving resource for the whole community for many years to come.”

The parish council now plans to renovate a telephone kiosk in Plaistow, bought from BT last month. Working in collaboration with the Plaistow Village Trust, the plans are to turn that listed phone box into a community book exchange.