A red phone box, Grade II listed
The K6 Telephone Kiosk in Central Markets, London, is a cast-iron red phone box designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935 to mark King George V's Silver Jubilee. Produced from 1936 outside Smithfield Market, it was listed Grade II on 21 May 1987, preserving a once-common piece of British street design.
Scott's simplified kiosk became a national symbol
The K6 Telephone Kiosk In Central Markets is a cast-iron phone box that still stands outside Smithfield Market today. It is painted the familiar red, with a domed roof and small windows set in a teak door. Giles Gilbert Scott drew up the design in 1935. Scott was already one of Britain's best-known architects, having designed Liverpool Cathedral and later Battersea Power Station. The Post Office wanted a kiosk that was cheaper and smaller than Scott's earlier K2 box, and asked him to simplify it. The K6 went into production in 1936 to mark King George V's Silver Jubilee.
The design spread fast. Between 1936 and 1968, around 60,000 K6 kiosks went up across Britain, with over 70,000 built in total. It became the standard red phone box most people picture when they think of England. Early kiosks like this one carried the Tudor Crown above the windows. After Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953, new kiosks switched to the St Edward's Crown instead, which lets collectors date an old box at a glance.
Many K6 boxes were sold off and scrapped in the 1980s and 1990s as phone use changed. This one escaped that fate. English Heritage listed it Grade II on 21 May 1987, protecting it as a small but significant piece of British design history.
This kiosk kept its red paint in the city
In 1949, the Royal Fine Arts Commission allowed kiosks in rural areas to be painted green or battleship grey instead, so they blended into the countryside rather than standing out. The one outside Smithfield Market kept its red paint, fitting a busy city market rather than a quiet lane.
In the 1970s, the Post Office began replacing the original glass panes with moulded plastic. Vandals had been smashing the glass, and plastic was cheaper to fix. Many K6 boxes lost their old glazing this way, though the change rarely made the news.
By the time this kiosk was listed in 1987, the K6 had already become a national symbol. Historians have called Giles Gilbert Scott's design "a thoughtful adaptation of architectural tradition to contemporary technological requirements," a formal way of saying he made something modern look like it belonged. Tourists photograph red phone boxes across Britain without knowing Scott's name, but they know the shape.
Listing saved the box from scrapping
By the 1990s, mobile phones had made most phone boxes pointless. Thousands were sold at auction or scrapped outright. Councils and Telecom companies kept only the ones with some historic or architectural value, mostly through listing.
The K6 kiosk's Grade II status protected it from that fate. It still stands on its spot by Smithfield Market, a cast-iron survivor among the market's butchers' stalls and delivery vans. Nearby, a matching pair of older K2 Telephone Kiosk boxes carries the same story one design generation earlier.
The phone inside, if it still works, sees little use. The box itself has outlived its purpose and become something closer to a monument: a small red building nobody built to be admired, standing because it was simply never worth tearing down.
The red kiosk still stands by Smithfield Market, kept for what it represents rather than what it does.
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