Sanderstead Hill Box

[hb88banzai]

The Box on Sanderstead Hill in Sanderstead - Z15

From circa 1955 --



A blowup --



Street view --



View of the Box Site --



Box Site Street View URL:  http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Farm+Fields,+Sanderstead,+London,+United+Kingdom&hl=en&ll=51.341026,-0.086475&spn=0.002336,0.005273&sll=51.310765,-0.079908&sspn=0.009403,0.021093&hnear=Farm+Fields&t=m&layer=c&cbll=51.341026,-0.086475&panoid=98HbflECc1xpL-XExbrxVg&cbp=12,64.4,,0,13.28&z=18

[petewilson]

Excellent find banzai!

[Mark]

why does the box look like it's had a few too many?

You can kind of make out the overgrown space the box used to live in on the last streetview picture.

[Volpone]

It is on an incline. Take a look at the retaining wall up the road from it.  It is stepped to deal with the hill.  It is hard to capture hills in photos. I first noticed it on a ski vacation. We took snapshots of insane, crazy slopes we did.  Then when we got them back (in Olden Dayes, when people used film cameras) the hills looked disappointingly flat.

[lorisarvendu]

You're right.  Once you notice the stepped walls your brain clicks that you're looking at a fairly steep hill, and the box suddenly looks fine.

[Scarfwearer]

Like this?


Crispin

[hb88banzai]

Of course, if you notice the Red Telephone Kiosk hiding behind the Police Box they apparently didn't take nearly as much effort in leveling it, as now you see it is actually leaning quite a bit.

EDIT: A view of the Box Site from further away to better show the slope of the hill --

[petewilson]

Here's this week's Hi-Res photograph from  around 1955 (Personally I think it's a little earlier)
But one of my favourite photos and I just keep thinking "The Mind Robber"   

Pete

[Volpone]

One of the challenges with the boxes is that it is darned scarce to see a color photo of one earlier than the late 50s.  I keep meaning to do a roundup of some of our TARDIS build photos and convert them to black & white to use as a reference on the color of these boxes.  Mine isn't a particularly light blue, but the last time I tried an "Unearthly Child" title card, I was surprised at how light it looked--close to the color of this one, IIRC.

[hb88banzai]

Yes, this has always been a haunting photo.

Regarding the colour - the southwest facing side of the Box (its front) is in full sun, so everything there is washed out from glare (look at the St. John plaque), so the northwest side visible behind the electrical box is probably much closer to its true colour.

Interesting how the Metbox seems to be tilted. In the above discussion on the observed discrepancies it had been assumed that the Box was level while other items were tilted, but in looking at these hi-res versions the lamp post, walls and house across the street, GPO Kiosk, electrical box and the A.R.W. Siren mast (just visible next to it amongst the foliage) all seem to agree pretty closely on what vertical is, yet the Metbox itself is pretty far off from these with the door side leaning quite noticeably towards the road. Being a big, heavy concrete structure, this must have been more than a bit unnerving when approaching it to use the phone or open the door. Wonder what caused this lean?

Here's a blowup of the hi-res --



We can now see for certain that it is still a Mark 2 here (as originally installed on Z Division), whenever the photo was taken.

Despite the lack of indication of a Resite in the original Met List, on the 1935 OS map the Box is in a different location, perhaps 20 yards or so to the southeast. This would have been just on the other side of the adjacent road, Farm Fields, but both it and the housing subdivision it services had yet to be constructed. The 1956 OS map shows the Metbox and GPO Kiosk right were they are seen in this photo.

[frostedwindows]

Just for interest, here's the angle of the pic adjusted on the assumption that the lamppost, trees, walls etc *were* truly vertical!

[Mark]

I had a play with this, in so much as overlaying the grid on Photoshop. I lined the picture to the grid and got the K6 phone box, the box thing in front of the police box, a lot of the building in the background all on the same vertical plane and the Police Box looks iffy



I found that if you try and line everything that "should" be on a vertical across the whole photo there is some drift, perhaps some sort of lens distortion? If any of you bods that know Photoshop inside out can have a play with altering the perspective or something, might prove interesting.

[petewilson]

I think volpone explained it below in a previous comment
it was simply placed in a strange position on a fairly steep incline (Hill)
Look how far the floor structure disappears into the ground on the right (More so than your normal Police Box)

Pete

[hb88banzai]

The view looking up the steep hill explains the increased perspective (due to vertical objects angling away from camera instead of being perpendicular to the POV) so that the left and right sides are not fully parallel (there's about a 4 degrees difference), but it doesn't explain how the electrical box and GPO Kiosk are at odds with the Police Box right next to them, to say nothing of the building right across the street. When everything agrees with each other save one, the one is most likely wrong. Any perspective and/or lens effects would be consistent, even if progressively worse at the edges.

If you line up the building on the left to be vertical and then measure the items on the far left, the electrical Box seems to be about the same as the building (ie, vertical), but the Police Box is listing nearly 2.5 degrees to the right, while the GPO Kiosk is only about 0.5 degrees. There's clearly something going on here.

[Volpone]

Yup. I hate to sell myself short, but as seems so common, I had a plausible hypothesis that doesn't entirely hold up.  It is tilted a bit because of the slope.  But when you compare its tilt to the tilt of everything else in the photo, it is still off.  The grid overlay really calls attention to the bricks in the background building--and even the adjacent phone booth.  So I'm afraid we need more information.  A possible theory could be that a tree root under the concrete has thrown the box out of true, but it doesn't look like there are any trees around big enough to shift the foundation on a 10x4' concrete booth.  Flooding and groundwater would be more plausible.  Big heavy concrete thing.  Soft ground underneath.  Whole thing shifts.  But on a slope like this it is hard to buy flooding.  Seismic activity?  Then why is everything else consistent?  I don't see any evidence of a car accident either.  I'm tempted to say the best theory is that the foundation got poured at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and not enough care was put into ensuring things were level.