A makeover is hopefully on the way for Marlborough’s battered iconic BT phone box

With peeling paint, dirty windows and weeds at its base,  Marlborough’s battered iconic BT red telephone box in the High Street, where tourists queue to have their photograph taken alongside, is hopefully on its way to a makeover.

And it will be thanks to Tory councillor Stewart Dobson, who made a plea for telephone box, originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1924, to be cleaned up at Monday’s meeting of the town council’s Amenities and Open Spaces Committee.

He revealed that he went walkabout down the High Street in support of his wife’s Marian’s bid as the town’s new Mayor to encourage shops and businesses to play a role in the Marlborough in Bloom campaign.

But when he went into Top Bags he was told in no uncertain terms that immediate action was needed to clean up the red BT box that stands outside – and where foreign tourists from Japan queued up to have their photographs taken.

“It is an iconic structure and I was told, ‘Look at it, it’s in a terrible condition’, which it is,” he informed fellow councillors. “‘The photographs the tourists are taking alongside it go all round the world.

“What a disgrace it is for Marlborough people to be represented by an uncared for telephone box.”

And he added: “Now I’ve got no idea who is responsible for looking after it. It’s not our telephone box. I am hoping the town clerk can discover who’s it is and that we can do something.”

He suggested that Richard Beale, the council’s estates manages, might ask one of his staff at least to remove the weeds around the base of the BT box, and pointed out: “It does need repainting.”

Town clerk Shelley Parker said someone had made an approach to the Town Council in the past to buy the BT box, some of which were in fact also erected in a few UK colonies round the world and thousands subsequently sold off by BT at £2,000 a time.

Deputy Mayor Councillor Margaret Rose insisted: “I would like to see telephone boxes kept. They are part of Marlborough’s history. To get rid of them would be really sad.

“They’re like the red letter box where we post our letters. They are a landmark, and we should hang on to them.  “I am would be quite happy to volunteer, get some paint…”

Councillor Richard Allen pointed out that removing telephone boxes was nevertheless difficult because they were so well embedded into the ground. “We need to do some research on its ownership and report back at the next committee meeting.”

And that is what is going to happen.