Bought local public convenience for £1

BT sold it to us for £1



Was in a very sorry state. Took all the glass out, removed the door because the wooden frame had totally rotted away and collapsed. looked much better for just having done that.

Have spent a year on and off, renovating it.

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How are they fixed to the ground, could it be safely removed and cleaned up? Quite like it for some strange reason haha

Chris

I believe he’s bringing it to Mayhem as an Al Fresco shower cubical


Nice project BTW

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I'm sure it looks bigger once you're inside than it does from the outside.

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longun":2bnd55er said:

How are they fixed to the ground, could it be safely removed and cleaned up? Quite like it for some strange reason haha

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Lower framework is fixed into a 1.5 ton concrete block! These settle in time, and if you look, you will find many boxes lean. This one leant so much, the door was permanently open, stuck in the mud, causing the wooden frame to rot.

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Retro Spud":2vf27duj said:

Chris

I believe he’s bringing it to Mayhem as an Al Fresco shower cubical


Nice project BTW

Click to expand...

If only. To purchase the box for£1, BT will only sell it to a parish council, on behalf of the community. It comes with restrictions. Being a small rural community, we are a fairly unimaginative lot. The collective community vote was just to simply restore it. I didn’t mind too much since it is such an icon.

Thats a fantastic piece of history to save for your community! Well done.

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jimo746":2xsfzhgt said:

I'm sure it looks bigger once you're inside than it does from the outside.

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Great save.

I always assumed the doors were metal, they always seemed heavy to open, maybe that was just the spring as i also remember them shutting rather quickly

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mk one":3dnwu5ae said:

Great save.

I always assumed the doors were metal, they always seemed heavy to open, maybe that was just the spring as i also remember them shutting rather quickly

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The glass insert section is cast iron, but the frame is all teak. Guess door would have been very unwieldy if wholly cast, plus the variability of the cast iron sections meant that each door had to be 'fitted' by planing the wood frame.

After hours of using a jack hammer to break up the base concrete we managed to free the box enough to lever it back upright, and reconcrete.



Glass cleaned up really well. Lucky to have the original glass - still has the tong marks where the glass had been picked up during the tempering stage. If you take time to look at many of the boxes around, you will see that much of the glass has been replaced in the 60's with polycarbonate, which has crazed and gone yellow.



One of the biggest jobs was renovating all the glass insert bars - took many months. If you ever consider purchasing a off the self renovated box you will find very few if any have reused the bars because they are such a pain. They do finish it off well though, particularly when finished off with the correct locating brass rivets.





Brasswork needed polishing.