Phone Box Thursday: Riverside, Padstow

A bit of a historical picture / crossover with Saturday ’80s Photo for today’s phone box! While I’m still hunting for the next phone box example in Doctor Who, I remembered I was going to share this one from the family archives. It’s a phone box that features in the background of a snap from our trip to Cornwall in September 1987.

Red phone box
Red phone box, Riverside, Padstow, 10th September 1987.

It was September 1987, and on this particular day of our Cornish holiday we were visiting the town of Padstow. I don’t have the exact date as photos in our family archive are only labelled by month, but I could probably track it down in the future as Mum has always tended to log things like that in her diaries. EDIT: Mum tells me it was the 10th. Thanks Mum!

The full vista of the photo:

Padstow, September 1987
L-R in foreground: Dad, me, Malcolm (in buggy).

I clearly wasn’t as interested in the phone box as I would be nowadays! The next photo on the roll features a milk van, which is probably even more of a rarity than a red phone box here in 2021, although there’s an interesting article here about their possible resurgence due to the pandemic.

Padstow, September 1987
Bonus milk van!

To my surprise and delight, both the pub and the phone box are still in situ!

(Coordinates 50°54’10.7″N, 4°93’73.2″W.)

The phone box even still has a phone in it as of the most recent Street View image taken in 2018. It looks very well-kept and is maybe maintained by the pub owners as well as the council.

Still hoping to get back to the Who phone boxes next week!

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