Inside UK's BIGGEST red phone box graveyard full of 70 rusting kiosks abandoned next to train line – and why it exists
EERIE snaps from the UK's biggest red phone box graveyard reveal rows of rusting kiosks.
The chilling snaps show the 70 rotting booths stood next to the abandoned train line, but the graveyard hides a heartwarming secret.
6
6
6
When mobile phones became popular, phone booths fell out of fashion and many fell into disrepair.
Left to decay, the 70 kiosks in Merstham, Surrey, are a sinister sight.
However, the kiosks are actually part of a massive restoration project.
Unicorn Restorations use the site to bring the boxes - which are a beloved national symbol - back to their former glory.
The site's hardworking staff spend 30 hours on each box, stripping them down and repainting them in the General Post Office's iconic red.
New glass is installed in the phone booths' doors to finish off the restoration.
There are also three different models of red telephone booths, including the original K2, the famous K6 and the modern K8.
The K6 boxes were designed in 1935 to mark King George V's silver jubilee and, at one point, 60,000 of the boxes were in use across Britain.
Often the boxes are used in films to create quintessentially British sets.
Film franchises including Harry Potter, Paddington and Disney's Christopher Robin are just a few famous productions to use Unicorn Restorations.
I got drunk and bought a double decker bus online - now I've transformed it into the workshop of my dreams in the garden
The booths are available to buy too and are priced from £4000 to £20,000.
Nicolas Ritter, a professional photographer, recalled visiting the yard back in 2012.
He said: 'Being at the telephone graveyard was a great experience for me. It felt like a journey back into the history of the country as the phone boxes are such a unique symbol of British culture.
'Viewing this museal location now after the beginning of a new age of communication the phone graveyard bears a mystic vibe of a past era.'
The news comes as plans are made for an iconic steam train to return to the nation's rails.
The 60163 Tornado will travel from London Waterloo towards Woking and Basingstoke from August 16.
It will follow the route of the classic ACE trains which travelled along the South West coast.
Kelly Osborne, managing director of The Railway Touring Company, said: "We are delighted to be working with the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust to provide opportunities for people from Woking and Basingstoke to travel with Tornado and for many more to see the locomotive in action.
"It is very exciting that Tornado will be back on the national rail network."
6
6
6
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
37 minutes ago
- Sky News
Richard E Grant goes on 'emotional' Gavin And Stacey tour - in memory of his late wife
Richard E Grant has shared an emotional video of his trip to Barry - the town made famous by the hit TV show Gavin And Stacey. He was joined by the show's co-creator Ruth Jones, who is best known for playing Nessa. They are both filming a new drama called The Other Bennet Sister, which delves into a character in Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice. Grant excitedly said "oh my god" as he stood outside Stacey's family home - and headed across the road to Uncle Bryn's. A trip to Barry Island soon followed to visit some of the sitcom's most famous landmarks, including Marco's Cafe and the beachfront. And the actor's visit wouldn't have been complete without Jones putting on her best Nessa voice - and asking: "Oh, Rich, what's occurin'? "It's really emotional being here," Grant said. "The last months of my wife's life, we watched Gavin And Stacey on repeat - and it just cheered us up endlessly." In 2021, Grant announced that his wife Joan Washington had died - eight months after she was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
True to life or not, F1 movie draws on decades of drama
LONDON, June 25 (Reuters) - The racing scenes in Brad Pitt's new F1 movie are impressively authentic but the filmmakers have also made much of how the sport's past is woven into the plot -- with a hefty slice of Hollywood artistic licence. "We just drew from history. A little this, a little that, then we had Lewis Hamilton keep us straight," commented Pitt at a New York premiere ahead of this week's general release in cinemas. Apple's senior vice-president of services Eddy Cue, a lifelong Formula One fan and Ferrari board member, told reporters after a media screening that "there's not a single event in here... that hasn't happened in a real race." That does not mean, of course, that such events could still happen now or that they served as anything more than inspiration. The Apple Original Films blockbuster -- with scenes shot during grand prix weekends -- is a redemption story, with Pitt playing ageing driver Sonny Hayes on an unlikely comeback alongside a young hotshot at a struggling team. Seven-times world champion Hamilton provided advice and is credited as a co-producer on a movie scripted for audiences unfamiliar with the sport. Pitt's age -- 61 in real life -- has been called out as unrealistic for a driver in the modern era but as Hamilton, 40, said when filming started in 2023: "Brad looks like he's ageing backwards." The oldest current F1 driver is Spaniard Fernando Alonso who will be 44 next month but in the 1950s, when physical demands were less but dangers greater, Philippe Etancelin and Louis Chiron raced at 55. Luigi Fagioli was a winner at 53. F1 comebacks also tend to follow short absences nowadays, one or two years at most, but it was not ever thus. Dutch driver Jan Lammers raced from 1979-82 and was out for more than a decade -- when he won Le Mans and raced at Daytona -- before returning in 1992. Italian Luca Badoer also had 10 years between races before a short-lived comeback in 2009. Drivers have indeed gone from last to first in barely believable circumstances, made winning strategy calls and taken triumphs with unsung teams that would not normally be considered contenders. The 2011 Canadian Grand Prix lasted more than four hours, featured six safety car deployments and was won by Jenson Button who at one point was at the back of the field and had two collisions including one with McLaren teammate Hamilton. Button made five pitstops, plus a drive-through penalty, and picked up a puncture in a race halted for two hours. Hayes' backstory is of racing Ayrton Senna before suffering a crash so violent he was flung from the car still attached to his seat. That is modelled on Northern Ireland's Martin Donnelly who crashed at Jerez in practice for the 1990 Spanish Grand Prix and was left inert in the middle of the track. He survived, miraculously, but there was to be no F1 comeback. Drivers have escaped blazing crashes, Frenchman Romain Grosjean after his car erupted in a fireball at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix while Niki Lauda suffered serious burns in a 1976 Nuerburgring crash. The Austrian returned to racing six weeks later. There are nods to the Crashgate scandal, when Brazilian Nelson Piquet Jr crashed deliberately at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix and triggered a safety car that helped teammate Alonso win. A female technical director? Not yet, but women have run teams and work as strategists, race engineers and pitlane mechanics -- although the movie is far from realistic in that regard. For F1 fans of a certain age there is the 'Easter egg' of a glimpse of the Monza banking in homage to 1966 movie 'Grand Prix'. F1 director Joseph Kosinski said that classic, and Steve McQueen's 1971 movie 'Le Mans', were his touchstones. "Those movies are now almost 60 years old but you can still watch them and still marvel at the cinematography and the feeling of being there," he said. "The whole practical nature of this film was inspired by those classics".
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Inside Jeff Bezos' lavish wedding as insiders spill every jaw-dropping detail
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez are set to tie the knot on the obscure island of San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice amid three days of festivities this week Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and journalist Lauren Sánchez are to finally tie the knot - despite concerns wedding crashers are poised to strike. Protesters with Greenpeace and the UK-based activist group Everyone Hates Elon (EHE) are braced to express their fury at the extravagant affair, which will see 200 guests enjoy a pre-wedding gala dinner tomorrow night and then several other festivities across three days. Mr Bezos, 61, has already had to amend plans, though, because Venice residents have threatened to blockade the city's historic canals with inflatable crocodiles. They are so unhappy the billionaire "will shutting down Venice" that Mr Bezos has scrambled to move the ceremony itself from the 16th-century Scuola Grande della Misericordia to Arsenale, a vast, fortress-like complex of shipyards and warehouses once used to build Venetian warships. The star is determined for the occasion to go ahead without any further snags as he has been dating Miss Sánchez, a news reporter, for some seven years. It is likely no challenges will arise once the 200 guests, including Kim Kardashian and her mother Kris Jenner, descend on the tiny island of San Giovanni Evangelista for Thursday's dinner. Just 11 people live on the island and its only dwelling is a modest five-bedroom home, previously the guesthouse to a convent which was part of a long-destroyed monastery complex. But in mainland Venice, where most of the guests will stay and get a boat onto the island, EHE and Greenpeace protesters yesterday unfurled a giant 20x20m message close to the spot where Mr Bezos is to marry his partner. The banner, in the city's famous St Mark's Square, reads: "IF YOU CAN RENT VENICE FOR YOUR WEDDING YOU CAN PAY MORE TAX." The groups complain Mr Bezos, a father of four, is the second-richest man in the world yet is reported to pay a 1.1% true tax rate. A spokesperson from EHE said: "As governments talk about hard choices and struggle to fund public services, Jeff Bezos can afford to shut down half a city for days on end just to get married. Just weeks ago, he spent millions on an 11-minute space trip. If there was ever a sign billionaires like Bezos should pay wealth taxes, it's this. "While ordinary people struggle to pay the bills, there are more billionaires than ever before. These two things are obviously connected - they're getting richer at our expense. It's not rocket science: tax billionaires like Jeff Bezos now." It is thought the billionaire anticipated the backlash, hiring San Giovanni Evangelista as an emergency measure to have room away from any fuss. A wedding planner said yesterday: This is an inspired choice. Wonderful – not obvious – and very clever." But another source told Mail Online they believe Mr Bezos to be "unlucky", having ended up "picking [one of] the worst days to get married". They alluded to the conflict between Iran and Israel which remains tense despite Donald Trump's claims a ceasefire was reached on Monday. And Mr Trump was expected at the wedding but, due to the tensions in the Middle East, it is anticipated the Republican leader will miss the ceremony on Friday. The guest list is, though, full of stars from across the world, notably in wealthy showbusiness circles. It is thought Mr Bezos and Miss Sánchez will make a substantial donation to Venetian charities with their own wealth. Their wedding planners also insist they are attempting to "minimise any disruption to the city", home to around 250,000 people. A source said: "They don't want it to look as if they have bought Venice."
