More than eight miles down the Borrowdale Valley in the lower foothills of Scafell Pike, this public telephone box in the hamlet of Seathwaite surely stakes a claim as England’s most remote of its kind.
Located in a Lake District farmyard in what is officially the wettest corner of the United Kingdom, these days the rusting box is home to spiders and a few fading taxi cards.
But it proved its worth at the weekend during high drama on the fells having managed to survive a spate of public call box closures by BT five years ago.
A man needed to make an emergency 999 call to help his teenage son recently but the surrounding mountain ranges meant no mobile telephone reception on any network.
His 13-year-old son was unable to walk any further having slipped and injured his knee during a family outing to Taylor Force Gill — a mile-long walk to one of the Lake District’s highest waterfalls which plunges 140ft into Seathwaite.
The worried father made his way down to Seathwaite where he found the working public telephone, where he was able to summon help with a call to the emergency services.
Nine volunteer members of Keswick Mountain Rescue Team responded and after an assessment by the team doctor, the boy was stretchered down to Seathwaite where his parents then took him onto hospital.
The box had been lined up for the chop after BT produced figures which showed that between September 1 2015 and August 31 2016 – 378 calls were made — none of them being emergencies.
But situated as it is on a busy starting point for routes to Great Gable and Scafell Pike, BT wisely relented with the box spared after a campaign.
Its presence beside the toilet block remains a re-assurance to residents and ramblers alike.
On a drizzly Tuesday in Seathwaite this week, experienced walking guide Ian Oldham, of Kendal, was under no illusions of its value as he prepared to lead a young family of six up Scafell Pike.
Having walked and climbed the Lake District for 60 years, Ian said: “The great thing about these phone boxes is they are still marked on the map.
“They’re vital because if you really need help, down here your mobile doesn’t work. You’ve got a good chance of communicating with mountain rescue if you have got a good working public phone box.
“There’s lot of valleys in the Lakes where the mobile does not work and then you are stuck trying to find a house that someone is living in.”
Seathwaite resident Karen Middleton added that people who got into trouble in the hills often needed to knock on doors including hers and that of long-standing farmer Peter Edmondson.
But she said she did not have a phone and if residents were out working, help was not always immediately available so it was vital that telephone boxes of its kind remained in place.
Walkers, however, should still beware — the box no longer takes cash calls!
