By Violet Brown
A PORTAFERRY woman hopes to spark conversations as she begins restoring an old telephone box.
Celia Spouncer hopes to encourage locals to get involved with conversations about shared history and memories of an old disused telephone box located on Tara Hill, along the Quintin Bay Road, and to discuss ideas for its renovation.
Celia, who works as an ecological consultant, explained how the red telephone box had been sitting unused for years, beginning to look dishevelled as ivy climbed through broken window panes.
The iconic GPO telephone box K6 model was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935, painted in a bright red to make the kiosks easy to spot.
While most of the kiosks have been decommissioned over the years due to the introduction of mobile phones and changing technology, thousands remain, often repurposed by local community groups into mini-libraries, seed swap spots or house defibrillators.
This particular phone box still has a connection wire.
Celia was inspired to bring life back into the Tara Hill kiosk after listening to a radio piece about red telephone boxes as they celebrated 100 years of existence. Having spoken to a local farmer, Celia said it would be great to ‘smarten up’ the kiosk and get the ivy off it.
“When I heard the article on the radio I thought ‘it’s time we actually do some work on the telephone box’,” she said. “A few of us went down and cleared the ivy off the top. There was a lot of growth. We also did an assessment of what else needs done.
“There is a glass panel on the top that has ‘telephone’ on it and you can apparently order that.”
Celia said while she had been made aware BT can help with some restoration work on the boxes, it was vague who took responsibility for the upkeep of the iconic kiosks.
“That’s why there have been a lot of them restored by communities across Northern Ireland,” she said.
Celia said she was keen to hear people’s memories of using the telephone box as restoration begins and navigated those hoping to tell theirs to the Portaferry Past and Present Facebook page.
“There have been some conversations on there about this particular telephone box,” Celia said, noting how one post said that during the war the coastguard would cycle to the kiosk to send messages of threats from the sea.
Striking up conversations already, other posts on Facebook from interested locals claim they hid 10 pence pieces on the inside in case they needed to phone home, while others recalled it as a secret place to phone their boyfriend.
“Lots of people are saying they are thrilled the work is being done and it’s nice to get that feedback and to see that people do notice the phone box and that something is being done to look after it,” Celia said.
Celia hopes that as conversations and renovations continue, the public might start suggesting what they would like done with it.
She continued: “I don’t think it is up to us to make those kind of decisions on our own. I think we should create conversations about it and get a consensus on what people would like to do.
“There is still quite a lot of work to be done. We might play with what can be done with the box and what people would like to be done.”
Those who hope to continue in the conversations about the telephone box repairs or wish to share their memories of using it are asked to do so on the Facebook post on Portaferry Past and Present.
