This AA box has appeared by the roadside a few miles from where I live. They’re a dying breed, these AA boxes, and seeing one that was new to me set me thinking about their history.
In the post-war period there were over 1,000 AA telephone boxes scattered all over the country. They were originally built to provide shelter for sentries on the staff of the Automobile Association, who could offer help and directions to passing members; they also contained telephones, from which the sentry could call for further assistance. The first boxes were installed in 1911, and by 1920, AA members were themselves issued with a key to open the boxes, from which they could call for assistance if they had broken down. Maps, a light, a fire extinguisher, and other equipment were kept in the box for members’ use.
In spite of their shortcomings for those who broke down far from a box, they proved popular. When a box was manned by a sentry, he would salute the driver of a car bearing the AA’s distinctive badge, and a camaraderie built up between sentries and members. But with the development of communications technology, the increase in vehicle reliability and other factors, the boxes fell out of use, were replaced or supplemented by more modern roadside telephones, and this whole infrastructure of members’ telephones was finally rendered superfluous by the rise and rise of the mobile phone.
There are now only 30 or so boxes, without their original telephones, remaining,* some of which are in open-air museums such as Beamish and Avoncroft. The example in my picture has been restored by the volunteers of the Gloucester and Warwickshire Steam Railway, a heritage line whose whistles I can occasionally hear from the town where I live. It was originally sited at Andoversford near Cheltenham and apparently was in seriously damaged conditioned before the heritage railway acquired it and restored it. Now it’s a welcome sight as one leaves behind the Toddington roundabout in the direction of the climb up the Cotswold escarpment at Stanway Hill, on the way to Stow-on-the-Wold. As once it would have been welcome to motorists who were lost, or in need of mechanical help, as they went their way along the local steep, curvaceous and often chilly roads.
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* A website here lists 32 survivors, of which 12 are in museums and one is at the AA headquarters at Basingstoke.
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