September 2025
Walditch resident and local librarian David Brazier takes us on a tour of the village’s book-filled, repurposed phone box…
A few weeks after I moved to Walditch, my lovely neighbour asked me to look after the book exchange, which is housed in a red telephone box on the main road of this chocolate-box-pretty village.
I love books – they have been my life as an English teacher, and my hobby – so of course I said yes. I immediately became curious about these ubiquitous red boxes that are dotted throughout the land.
The red phone box is an iconic symbol of British culture. The model we have in Walditch, as well as outside Bridport Post Office and elsewhere in the town, is a K6, introduced in 1936 to celebrate King George V’s silver jubilee. It was smaller and cheaper to produce than the earlier K2 and became the standard across the UK, with more than 60,000 K6 boxes being installed.
It was the rise of the mobile phone that did for public phone boxes and allowed people to reimagine them. Now recognised as heritage pieces, thousands of boxes (especially K2s and K6s) were listed for protection. Many have been repurposed as libraries, defibrillator stations, or art installations.
I love looking after the mini library in Walditch, keeping it tidy, sorting the books out and posting news online about new additions. It’s fascinating to witness the flow of books and seeing some that turn up, shock and surprise. Who donated three copies of Eddie Large’s biography? And who donated that copy of the Kama Sutra?
This year we have had visits from George Clooney, Her Majesty Queen Camilla, a lion (pictured) and the actual writer Tom Cox, who donated several copies of his novels, an act of great generosity. At Christmas I installed some fairy lights and there have even been some ghostly goings-on.
So why not pop in and take a book if you are in the village, or donate some of those tomes that are sitting at home gathering dust?
David Brazier