A rusty old phone box is now being put to good use as a book exchange in the Derbyshire village of Little Eaton. It has proved so successful that villagers are planning on buying another telephone box.
Councillors initially bought the former telephone booth from BT for just £1 and the parish council refurbished it and turned it into a book exchange for locals. Villagers can drop off and borrow old books without having to pay a penny.
Chairman of Little Eaton Parish Council, Bill Hutchison, said he was very happy with how popular the book exchange has become: “It has been going for three or four months now.
“We repaired the phone box’s broken windows and ruined insides but it was a villager, Clare Howard, who came up with the idea of using it for people to exchange books and she has done a really great job with it.”
“Red phone boxes are a part of our heritage in and this way we not only hold on to that but we also make the village a more attractive place, because they really do look attractive.”
It has not been decided what the second phone box would be used for, but the village is appealing to its residents for ideas. There are also plane for a bench to be placed in front of the original phone box.
He said: “It would mean people could go along to the book exchange, choose a book and sit down and read it if they wanted.”
Clare Howard, a Little Eaton resident came up with the initial idea and has been helping to run the book exchange since it began.
She said: “I run a book club in the village and we decided an exchange would be a good extension of that. We got a local blacksmith to help put in shelves and stocked it with books.
“In the first week we were a bit worried because all the books disappeared. But by the second and third week, there were large numbers of books being dropped off.
“People can go to the exchange, take a book and swap it for another one. We’ve had no problems so far, everyone has respected it for what it is.”
Previously, a spokeswoman from British Telecom said: “It’s been great to see how different communities have used the boxes. Some have even converted them into drop-off points for deliveries of fruit and vegetables.”