Signs of the Times - AA Phone Box

Where would our transport network be without electronic communications? The moving of people requires the moving of messages. Railways needed the telegraph. Airlines needed radio. Neither got far without the other.

As people took to the car they had to have some kind of means to summon help in an emergency. The Royal Automobile Association and the Automobile Association were set up to help the motorist. In 1911 the AA placed its first roadside telephone kiosk as Ashtead in Surrey. The first 'sentry boxes' had been for patrolmen to shelter in bad weather. They had telephones inside for their use. Soon AA members were able to have their own key to open the roadside boxes in order to use the phone to summon help from their Association. Fire extinguishers and maps were also available inside. Over the years a network sprang up around the country and the RAC followed suit.

In the 1970s the boxes began to be removed, slender post-mounted phone units taking their place. Almost as that happened, the mobile phone revolution was under way and it has meant that even those post-mounted phones have gone. No-one was using the boxes; people who are likely to be AA and RAC members are highly likely to have a mobile, and non-members too, the remainder relying on ordinary public call boxes, though they, too, are slowly on the way out in many locations.

Some 21 wooden AA boxes remain, often listed as being of architectural importance within their particular surroundings, such as the one pictured, seen in the Lake District in 1987.