K6 Telephone Kiosk Facing Nos 1 And 3 (The Royal Saracen'S Head Public House)

BEACONSFIELD

411/14/150 WINDSOR END 02-JUN-88 (East side) K6 telephone kiosk facing Nos 1 and 3 (the Royal Saracen's Head Public House)

(Formerly listed as: WINDSOR END K6 Telephone Kiosk adjoining Beaconsfi eld Magistrates Court (not included))

II BUILDING: K6 telephone box

DATE: The K6 was designed in 1935; the date of this example is not known.

ARCHITECT: Giles Gilbert Scott

MATERIALS: Cast iron, glass

EXTERIOR: The K6 kiosk was a development on Scott's 1924 K2 design. It has a glazed door and sides beneath a domical roof; there are narrow panes on either side of the horizontal glazing. In the segmental upper structure on each side is a relief crown, placed above a glazed panel bearing the word TELEPHONE.

HISTORY: This type K6 telephone kiosk was listed on 2nd June 1988. Its list address was as follows: 'K6 Telephone Kiosk adjoining Beaconsfield Magistrates Court (not included)'. As part of an Environmental Improvement project that was completed in May 2005, South Bucks District Council removed some modern glass telephone kiosks from within the Beaconsfield Conservation Area, and replaced them with this K6 telephone kiosk. This K6 telephone kiosk was moved under listed building consent from its location outside the Beaconsfield Magistrate's Court in Windsor End, to a site further to the north on Windsor End, on a newly paved area outside numbers 1 and 3 (the Royal Saracen's Head Public House), Windsor End, Beaconsfield.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: The archetypal K6 telephone kiosk was designed by the eminent architect Giles Gilbert Scott (of Battersea Power Station and Liverpool Cathedral fame) in 1935 to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of King George V, and was a development on Scott's 1924 K2 design. The K6 kiosk is made of cast iron, with glazed door and sides beneath a domical roof; there are narrow panes on either side of the horizontal glazing. In the segmental upper structure on each side is a relief crown, placed above a glazed panel bearing the word TELEPHONE. Generally painted red, the Neoclassical design, influenced by the work of the Regency architect Sir John Soane, is of special architectural interest for the quality of the architectural design as applied to an industrially produced object of mass communication. Some 70,000 K6s were ultimately produced.