St. Nicholas Square, police signal box

HER Number

16591

District

Newcastle

Site Name

St. Nicholas Square, police signal box

Place

Newcastle

Map Sheet

NZ26SW

Class

Communications

Site Type: Broad

Telecommunication Structure

Site Type: Specific

Police Box

General Period

POST MEDIEVAL

Specific Period

Victorian 1837 to 1901

Form of Evidence

Documentary Evidence

Description

Hexagonal police signal box with gas lamp on the roof. Used the gas lamp for signalling. Located in front of the town hall (east side of south elevation). Shown on a photo which must post-date September 1894, as the Rutherford Fountain is present. Pre-dates 1900 because the tram posts are not present. Not clear whether it is wooden or metal. The Rutherford Fountain was moved to the Bigg Market in 1903 and was replaced by a statue of Queen Victoria. Photos of the statue unveiling in 1903 do not show the police signal box so it had been removed by that date. A similar demo-model of a wooden hexagonal NTC police signal box is shown on a photo of Glasgow, taken in 1895.

Easting

424940

Northing

564050

Grid Reference

NZ424940564050

Sources

Petra Caroline [Henderson]'s Police and Police Boxes Virtual Telephone Museum, www.henderson-tele.com/police/boxes/bytown2.html; Immanuel Burton, 2006, A Brief History of the Police Box, November 2006 newsletter of the Construction History Society, www.policeboxes.com; Decentralization and the Police Box System by Frederick James Crawley, Chief Constable of Newcastle upon Tyne, The Police Journal, Volume 1, Number 1, January 1928; Peter Darrington, 2005, A History of the British Police Telephone Kiosk