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Saturday, October 11, 2008, 10:00
Police were called to East Prawle in South Devon after a tractor blocked the road out of the village. Angry residents were intent on stopping workmen taking away their treasured kiosk.
The village achieved national headlines last year when the parish council paid £100 for a concrete podium to enable villagers to pick up mobile phone signals. The signal is so faint that people came to regard the public telephone box as a vital communication link.
East Prawle parish councillors used a tractor to try to block workmen from getting to the phone box in Higher Park on the edge of the village. Then parish council clerk and local farmer Roger Tucker stepped inside the kiosk and refused to come out as the workmen prepared to hoist it on to their truck.
The stand-off ended an hour later after the intervention of police, and workmen took the box away.
Now villagers are campaigning to buy the box back, minus its telephone equipment, as a symbol of what village life used to be like.
"We want this box. It is part of the village's heritage," Mr Tucker said. "We are still pressing ahead to buy it and hopefully we will get the same box returned to us."
The kiosk is a K6 box designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935. The parish council has been pressing for months to stop BT from removing it and had begun the process of saving it by adopting it for £1 – although the telephone equipment would be removed.
The councillors were alerted when workmen showed up and began removing the telephone equipment. Mr Tucker, along with parish council chairman David Hampden-Smith and parish councillor Tim Blyth, attempted to negotiate with BT to get the removal suspended.
"I stood in the box and then they called the police," said Mr Tucker
The calls to BT proved unsuccessful and when the police arrived Mr Tucker was forced to leave the box. It is destined for a BT storage area in Coventry.
Mr Tucker said that 38 years ago, his wife Vicky's waters broke inside it as she phoned her mother to say she was in labour.
"She is quite sentimental about it and last night she was crying about it," he said.
A police spokesman confirmed that two officers had been called to the village at about 5.30pm on Wednesday to deal with a dispute over the ownership of the box.
A spokesman for BT said the company was planning to investigate what had happened at East Prawle over the removal of the village kiosk.
He added: "This was a kiosk that was due to be removed and it was a kiosk that BT was perfectly entitled to remove."
As for the podium, it is in high demand from villagers. BBC Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine was one of those who frequently referred to East Prawle as a place to escape the sound of a mobile phone.
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Roger Tucker and Tim Blyth at the site of the telephone that was taken away by BT, above. Far left: Residents at the only spot in East Prawle where it is possible to pick up a mobile phone signal.
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