Brighton Police Box..?

[peted]

I got very excited that I'd found yet another design of police box still surviving on the streets...
don't know if any of you guys had seen it?



After a little research, I now know it's history...

[ironageman]

That's more like it! Apart from the clocktower box, googling for Brighton police boxes looks promising but tends to turn up little police stations of brick or concrete - which are indeed police boxes, if you like, but not very time-machine-like. Did it ever have a light on top? - or indeed a sign to say POLICE? Did you photograph from the opposite direction too? (I don't mean at the same time!)

Or are you pulling our legs, and it's a bus shelter or something?

[peted]

Hi Ironage, good to hear from you!
Not *exactly* pulling your leg - I genuinely thought I'd spotted a real police box of a design that I'd never seen before... but after asking a few Brighton folk it's the control box of the "Mazda Electric Fountain" in Victoria Gardens, Marlborough Place, Brighton. (You can see the fountain behind). The Fountain was given to the town of Brighton in 1930 by Thomson-Houston Ltd following an exhibition. It was originally internally illuminated at night by colour changing light bulbs supplied by the Mazda Electric Company. The box has been preserved beautifully, especially the stained glass, but I don't believe the fountain is lit by the box anymore. Here's a better picture:

[a lovely shade of blue]

Apparently there used to be some kind of police box opposite preston park?

[peted]

Hi - Yes! I have a photo of it somewhere, from the 60s - it looked more like a portacabin though, not really kiosk like - I think Ironage mentioned it earlier.

[ironageman]

I believe I've seen a picture of this fine non-police-box before, possibly on this forum or on Flickr, but such a close view that it didn't look very police-box-ish. It looks very like one in your picture.

- and speaking of Flickr, someone there has tagged a picture of the blue kiosk behind the church in Covent Garden as a 'police box' - which again it looks very like, but is it really anything to do with the police? Does anyone know?


((edit possibly to follow - if I discover that I'm allowed to put a link to someone else's flickr page here then I'll do so))

[celation]

Beautiful! That was when they built things to look decent!

I can't imagine that many electrical control boxes would be built to that standard these days...