Surbiton Station Box

[hb88banzai]

The Box on the forecourt to Surbiton Station - V44

Screen cap from the 1955 film "Confession" --



From the Francis Frith collection (just to the right of the trolley line pole in the middle of the picture) --



Note that this view is no longer possible because of a large building now being where the low building on the left of the Box was.

Another view from a slightly later date (low building is gone) --



Current street view from the approximate POV of the first picture --



View of the Box Site --



The sidewalk curbs were all extended due to the new building on the right, but the Box would have been centered about where the handlebars are of the bike on the ground.

Box Site Street View URL:  http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Victoria+Road,+Surbiton,+Surrey&hl=en&ll=51.39292,-0.304441&spn=0.001915,0.009334&sll=51.361492,-0.161705&sspn=0.071922,0.143337&oq=victoria+road,+sur&hnear=Victoria+Rd,+Surbiton,+Surrey,+United+Kingdom&t=m&layer=c&cbll=51.392922,-0.304443&panoid=dCug6byS4BLg7es_AO9NzA&cbp=11,27.92,,1,11.22&z=17

[hb88banzai]

New photo of this Box from a Postcard (date unknown, but probably late 1940s to early 1950s) --



Blowup --

[petewilson]

Nice Photo Banzai...These Art-Deco Railway Stations always make me feel that I'm at the seaside (Rayner's Lane is another good example!)

Pete

[petewilson]

Here's another Hi-Res Photo (Which in my opinion isn't as Hi-Def as the others and seems a bit blurry!)
Francis Frith date it as about 1955 but I think those vehicles look more 1940's to me!!

[Volpone]

One of the things I enjoy about these threads is the detective work--and then arguing your reasoning.  I only wish I knew more about British history and sociology.  My inclination is that the photos in the thread are in reverse chronological order--with some caveats. 

The still from the 1955 film gives us a fairly hard date for a baseline.  Say 1954 that the footage was shot.  It shows a fairly pristine looking box in classic late dark blue/white livery.  Not a lot of architectural cues that I notice.  We do get the backside of a fairly old-timey looking car in the background (more on that later).  We also get two men in raincoats, one wearing a hat, one not. 

The next photo, the box is still in a fairly good state of maintenance, but appears to be the lighter interim shade of blue with blue trim.  More cars, more pedestrians, and a lot of bicycles (mostly parked).  Again, most of the pedestrians are wearing overcoats.  The interesting thing for me is the majority of men look to be wearing hats.  The only obviously hatless man is the cyclist (and I imagine wearing a felt hat could be problematic while riding a bike). 

The newest photo, the box appears in poorest repair, on the line of a post-war box.  Looks very faded, very mottled, and with a couple large patches of bare concrete or primer showing.  Least number of overcoats, and about 50-50 on hats. 

So why do I keep yammering on about hats?  Certainly in the USA no respectable adult male would go outside in the 1930s without a hat.  People who write about fashion mark the Kennedy Administration as a point that saw a marked drop in men wearing hats.  JFK projected the image of a youthful, active President and regularly appeared in public without a hat, so Americans followed suit and hats fell out of favor (until, say, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," where they experienced a slight uptick).  While I have no British parallel, in the early Bond films Sean Connery often wore a hat.  That was his signature entrance, when he'd toss his hat and land it on Moneypenny's hat tree.  Then, unless I'm misremembering, the hat disappears in "Goldfinger."  In fact I want to say he tosses it and then it is gone after he sees M and he comments "Didn't I used to have a hat?"  We really don't see Bond wear a hat after that point, so hats on men is always a gauge of what side of 1960 or so we're standing on. 

Cars are pretty useless to me.  I just don't know enough about British cars to be able to use them for dating a photo.  To compound the problem, since this is a transit center, the cars we seem to have in every photo appear to me to be cabs, lined up at a cab stand.  If British cabs are anything like New York City cabs, they kept an outmoded body long after it had gone out of style.  In NYC it was the 1955 Chevy that you see in Checker cabs.  I wonder if this was the case with London cabs as well. 

I always wish more of these boxes were sited by movie theaters.  Then if you could read the marquee, you'd know what was playing and ZAP! Instant ballpark date.  Sadly they aren't.  I never see anything that has prices either.  Not that it matters, because I don't really understand English currency, let alone what things cost at different points in history.  So if a dry cleaner had a sign that said it cost 37 quid to clean and press a shirt I'd have no clue what that meant. 

Lighting conditions
hat/no hat
cabs

[hb88banzai]

I agree.

One thing though, I believe the latest photo in the group (chonologically) is the one taken from a high vantage point looking down at the roof, etc.

Another point is that the footage from the 1955 film appears like it might have been shot day-for-night, so the grey tone of the Box is possibly very skewed and the resolution is a bit too low in the capture to tell for sure what the trim colour is. One of the things I've noticed in looking at the older photos is that a very slight change in exposure can have a drastic change in the tone of grey, so that otherwise comparable colours based on their relation to, say, the top signs can look quite different - light vs. dark.

A blowup of the most recent hi-res shot (c1955) --



It does indeed look very post-war era disheveled. Appears that some of the tinted panes (eg, the one in the door) have been replaced with clear or pebbled panes as well. The war was not kind to these boxes.

The 1934 OS map doesn't show the Box, even though it was erected in 1931 --



It should be at the centre of the map, just above the first "t" in "Southampton". This would place it off of of any sidewalk in this time period, so despite the lack of indication in the original Met List, this Box was likely resited at least a few yards. Unfortunately the map doesn't help with exactly where it might have originally been. As the station was completely rebuilt in 1937-1938, any resiting probably occurred then.

The 1956 OS map locates the Box in the position shown in all the above photos (marked "PCB" at centre of map) --

[Volpone]

If this hobby has impressed one thing on me, it is that blue is a bloody tricky color. Spend months trying to find the "exact" color of blue or just grab one at random off the shelf and under certain lights the blue you spent all the time on will look lousy and under other lights the one you just grabbed will be perfect.  Makes it hard enough to know what color blue was being used even if most of the photos weren't black & white. 

[petewilson]

Here's this week's "Hi-Res" Photo taken around 1955......

[hb88banzai]

Not a lot to see at this distance, but here's a blowup --

[hb88banzai]

I finally found a photo of the early Cricklewood type (Mk 0) Metropolitan Police Telephone Box that was sited here, showing V44's approximate original position in relation to the old (pre-1937) railway station buildings.

Here's a photo of what the yard looked like circa 1850 --



Now, here is a photo of the old-style Police Box (from the dress and vehicles, probably circa 1920) --



The station is the building on the right, behind the Box, and that's the Southampton Hotel on the left.

A couple of blowups --





This Box appears to have been erected in 1907 on land owned by the Surbiton Uban Distric Council, and remained in service until replaced by V44 in early 1931. The site for the MetBox, both before and after the 1937 building of the new Art Deco railway station building, was very close to the location pictured.

Here's a lager scale extract of the 1869 OS Map (1:1056 scale) - though it's much earlier than the year it was sited, it's useful as it shows the buildings, sidewalks and fence lines are the same (the location of the early Box marked in red at centre) --



For further reference on how the area subtly changed in the intervening years, here are a couple normal scaled OS maps (1:2500 scale):

1913 (Box site at centre of map) --



1915 (partial coverage) --




As above, it was at the fence line just to the left of where it changes direction, above the "T" in "Southampton" on both maps. There appears to have been some significant changes to parts of the fence line and driveway openings in order to create the island of shops that persisted after 1937, and which may have necessitated a slight change in the Box's siting some time before the 1934 OS map.

Here's that 1934 map again, showing what may in fact be the Metbox (though unlabeled) as that black square just inside the fence line at centre of map (above the "ha" in "Southampton") --



That position is only a few yards away from the original site, and also very close to the final, post-1937 site.

[hb88banzai]

Found a photo of the Station taken not long before the original type box was installed that shows the Box Site quite well.

This photo is probably circa 1900 --



Here's a blowup of the future Box Site --



It would be positioned just in front of this short section of fence midway between the pillar-posts at each end, about where the leftmost of the pair of trees at centre frame stands.

[hb88banzai]

Another view of this Box, probably from some time in the 1960s --



A blowup --

[Dalekoracle]

Volpone, on may 29th, 2014, wrote: I  always wish more of these boxes were sited by movie theaters.  Then if you could read the marquee, you'd know what was playing and ZAP! Instant ballpark date."
On the right of that last high res, you can see that the Ritz Cinema in Surbiton was showing the Doris Day picture "Jumbo" - so it looks like that photo dates to 1962

[hb88banzai]

Well spotted, Pete!

"Billy Rose's Jumbo" was apparently released in the US on 06 Dec 1962 and was an American made musical film, but don't know when it was released in the UK (the IMDB is only showing six dates, and the UK isn't one of them). Of those listed, only West Germany still got it in 1962 (on 21 December), while most of the rest of the world had release dates some time in 1963. So, even if released simultaneously in the US and UK (even more so if simultaneously in West Germany and the UK), depending on how long the engagement was it could still have been early 1963. Regardless, that's a nice short window of time - wish all the photos were so easily dated.

[Volpone]

Indeed.  I'm not a historian or sociologist, so I don't know how long it took to distribute a film in the 1960s.  I don't think "second run" movie places were as big in those days as they are now, but even if they were, at most there's a 7 year window for when that photo was taken.  Be interesting to know when color film started to really outstrip black & white.  I don't think I started seeing color photos in newspapers with any regularity until the early 1990s, so if a photo was being taken for use in a newspaper, b&w film was still likely. 

OK.  Now that I've hemmed and hawed and tried my best to shoot down my own theory once someone actually used it to good effect, I'll concur that 1963 is probably a good date for this photo.