Telephone Kiosk at, 126 Portadown Road, Armagh, BT61 9HL

Telephone Kiosk at 126 Portadown Road, Armagh

This is a K6 telephone kiosk of standard cast-iron design, installed between 1970 and 1984 on the main Portadown to Armagh Road in a rural location between Richhill and Armagh, with Castle Dillon House to the west and Hockley Lodge to the east.

The kiosk follows Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's original K6 design from 1935, created to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V. It is a post-1955 variant, identifiable by the St. Edward's crown motif (replacing the earlier Tudor crown used before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953). The body is cast iron, painted red. Three principal elevations are glazed with approximately 75 per cent of the small panes surviving. The southwest elevation is solid. Each elevation displays the sovereign's St. Edward's crown motif as slot-in type, with a glazed TELEPHONE panel above—all panels appear to have been replaced. The door opens to the northeast onto a lane that formerly provided access to Woodview Post Office.

The door leather strap is missing, though its mountings remain. The kiosk remains functional. The structure does not appear on the 1970 Ordnance Survey map but is shown on the 1984 map, suggesting installation between these dates, probably closer to 1970.

The K6 design proved the most successful and widespread telephone kiosk type in Britain, with approximately 60,000 distributed throughout the UK from 1936 onwards. Production continued until 1968, when it was superseded by the more modernist K8 designed by Bruce Martin. The design was compact, easily mass-produced, and developed from Scott's earlier K2 (1926) and K3 (1929) models. Initial distribution included about 8,000 kiosks placed under the Jubilee Concession, which allowed towns and villages with a post office to apply for installation. A further 1,000 were installed over 12 years under the Tercentenary Concession (celebrating the Post Office's 300th anniversary), for local authorities paying a five-year subscription of £4.

The neighbouring house at 126 Portadown Road served as the local post office from sometime after 1947 until before 1984. The area is known as Woodview, probably referring to the extensive woodland at nearby Castle Dillon, a name applied to the pre-1835 house on the southeast side of the road by at least 1860. The townland is Mullanasilla (Irish: Mullach na Saileach, meaning 'summit of the sallows').