Green Moor is a windy outpost sat on a high ridge at the fringes of the Pennines in the UK. This is the gritty northern Yorkshire countryside at its toughest. When the weather allows there are great views to enjoy but there’s little else to do. Just a handful of houses cling to the hillside, and, since the pub closed earlier this year, a small chapel, a bus shelter (served twice a day), and a telephone box are the extent of the community facilities.

The phone box is of the old fashioned 1930s red type so common in rural villages the length and breadth of Britain. They’re as much a part of the landscape as the red bus is on London’s streets.

Inside, the Green Moor box is sparse, containing only a light that doesn’t work apart from the phone itself. Its red paint is faded but it doesn’t show the signs of vandalism to which many of its sisters have succumbed. “Horse manure for sale” is as close as you’ll get to a calling card.

The phone box is surrounded by blackberries – the fruit variety, not the electronic kind – but the irony hints at the real conundrum.

Bob Hoskins’ old mantra from the British Telecom (BT) adverts was ‘It’s good to talk’ and it couldn’t have been more appropriate. But since mobile phone coverage went pretty much universal and other forms of communication supplemented the traditional telephone conversation, the public phone box has become surplus to requirements.

BT wants to remove a third of its 60,000 boxes across the country which get used less than once a month and simply don’t pay for themselves. The Green Moor phone must be close to the top of the list.

A notice duly appeared in the phone box explaining it would be removed because of its low patronage. At first the news was met with sad but resigned acceptance. Stories were recalled of the old woman who used to live in the cottage next to the telephone box and used it as her own phone, making all her calls on it and giving out it’s number, refusing to have a line fitted to her own home.

But the people of Green Moor don’t much like change. The village stocks are still in place after hundreds of years. Comments have been exchanged in the bus shelter and at the post box. People would miss the phone box. They consider it part of the scenery of the village. Like the Shipping Forecast on Radio Four, people like the idea of it being there even if they don’t use it.

The parish council have picked up on the feeling and agree that they should resist attempts to remove the phone box. They’ve been in touch with BT who said they could keep the box, if they agreed to pay half of the £1000 per year costs of maintaining it. It’s not a commitment they can afford.

And they’re not alone. Other villages face the same loss and feel the same way. The pressure’s been building across the country until suddenly, at the last moment, the global communications giant has had a change of heart. They’ve come up with a new solution. It’s agreed all round that the phone is surplus to requirements; it’s the actual box that’s considered part of the fabric of a rural village that people want to keep. So BT has announced that they’ll remove the phone equipment and sell the box to the local council for a nominal fee of just £1.

The Parish Council will put their application and they expect to become one of the first in Britain to ‘adopt’ their phone box.

Others are questioning the point of a phone box without a phone. The little use it does receive is mainly from the walkers or cyclists who pass through the area and occasionally find their mobile phone has no signal or is short of battery power. The prospect of them roaming the wilds of the Pennines in search of a phone and heading for the little red box of salvation, only to find it’s been relieved of its communication equipment is a little unsettling.

And then there’s the question of what to put in place of the phone. Early suggestions range from tourist information to a pub. A public convenience, a fish tank, a giant flower pot have all been mentioned although a simple shelter to offer protection from the weather looks the most likely outcome, at least in the short term, operated on a strictly first come, first served basis. There’s unanimous support for a repaint, retaining the traditional poppy red of course.

The ideas will be thrown around until a council committee can be set up to exam the options for the Green Moor box. The debate might not quite match the U.S. elections, or the global political wrangling over the financial crisis, but it’s one victory for the little guy. I’ll keep you informed.

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