19-04-2025
'I visited the tiny library in a 100-year-old Islington phone box that lights up at night'
You may not have seen it before but nestled in a North London street is a tiny library filled with books for kids who are keen readers. On Upper Street, in front of William Tyndale Primary School, you can find the micro library inside a classic red phone box.
After a 15-minute walk from Angel Tube station, I got to see the adorable library for myself. Most of the books inside it are children's and picture books, which is to be expected with it being so close to a school. So, I took a trip down memory lane thinking about how much I would have loved to have something like this close to me as a child.
With books like 'The Tiger who Came to Tea', 'Where the Wild Things Are' and 'The Cat in the Hat', the Upper Street Little Library has plentiful options for little ones to get their teeth into. I flipped through some of the picture books with creases on the pages - a testament to how many times each book must have been read.
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The library lights up at night so one of the best times to see it glow is in the dark during winter. I visited it on a very warm day, just before the Easter holidays so the shelves were not as full, but since that must mean kids are making use of it I see that as a great sign. On the higher shelves, out of reach from the children, I saw books left by parents, like Nicholas Spark's The Lucky One, so there is something for everyone inside.
Dominic McKenzie Architects designed the reimagined phone box and I had the chance to ask him about how the quirky idea came to life. He said: 'The idea is that it sort of becomes like a lighthouse or a beacon, something that promotes reading. If you stand and look at it, people walk past and get very drawn to it. It's quite extraordinary during the darker months.
'If you have kids, you tend to have this sort of churn of picture books. I think it's very well placed to be a sort of a repository and recycling those picture books.'
Dominic told me the booth was an eye sore for many years, tipping over, with the roots of a large tree next to it. People walked up and down the street and at night, the phone box would often be vandalised with graffiti.
Giles Gilbert Scott built the phone box more than 100 years ago, in 1924. Dominic finished its restoration in January this year. In its new form it was tilted back up and repainted to its original bright red and new bespoke shelves were placed inside. Now, the phone box is home to many books that may otherwise have been forgotten on a shelf.
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