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Photo: Bob Dolby
One of Britain’s few remaining traditional red phone booths has been recycled into one of the country’s smallest lending libraries – stocking 100 books. Villagers from Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset can use the library around the clock, selecting books, DVDs and CDs. Users simply stock it with a book they have read, swapping it for one they have not. Marco Werman speaks with local resident Janet Fisher about the unusual library.
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MARCO WERMAN: Phone booths are a thing of the past in most places. The distant past, in fact, as in the time before cellphones. Well the small village of Westbury sub-Mendip in England is still holding onto its one booth. It no longer provides phone service but residents came up with a plan to save the phone booth or as they call it, the phone box. They’ve converted it into a miniature lending library. The town recently lost its mobile library service and local resident Janet Fisher says the box was not getting much use for telephone calls.
JANET FISHER: One person used it in 2008 so our village was given the option to buy this booth for a pound and we decided we’d have a tea party and all put our suggestions in and mine was to use it as this book exchange because of the lack of the mobile library and the fact that we wanted to do something useful with the box and so the suggestion was taken up and put into action.
WERMAN: So where are the books coming from?
FISHER: Well, the books are coming from everybody. We started off with four empty shelves and within a very few days, the villages had brought books that they read and enjoyed and they didn’t bring any rubbish, it was all lovely stuff and they’re exchanged on a regular basis. People bring a book and take a book. It’s never locked so it’s open all the time and there are now DVD’s and CD’s and we have a box on the floor for the children’s books and that’s very popular so it’s just taken off.
WERMAN: And how many books can you squeeze in to a British phone box?
FISHER: Well I would say about 150 books are in there at the moment.
WERMAN: Room for any more?
FISHER: Unless we hang them from the ceiling, no, I think that’s about it. But we’ve got a good variety. We’ve got cookery books, thrillers. We’ve got Shakespeare, poetry. You name it, it’s there. It’s a bit of everything. It’s lovely.
WERMAN: How many people have used the library so far?
FISHER: It’s very difficult to say, Marco because we don’t keep any lists or any records. There’s no rules and regulations and that’s one of the things that we find so endearing about it because every way you go these days, there’s somebody telling you how to do something so this is great. It’s just there for everybody to enjoy. But how many people use it, I don’t know but it is used because the books are constantly changing.
WERMAN: Will this officially be the world’s smallest library? Are you going to get a Guinness record for this?
FISHER: Well maybe we will but probably I think after we’ve done it, there will be a lot more appearing on the British landscape because it seems to be quite a nice idea. But whether it’s going to remain the smallest library in the world, I really don’t know.
WERMAN: Tell me a little bit about your town, Westbury sub-Mendip. What kind of …?
FISHER: I’ll tell you about Westbury sub-Mindip.
WERMAN: Yeah?
FISHER: It’s an old Somerset village. We’ve got about 800 people living here and it’s in the foothills of [SOUNDS LIKE] Demendet Hills which is in North Somerset. It’s in the west of the country, between Cheddar where the cheese comes from and the smallest city in England called Wells so there we are, sitting in North Somerset and our little square is in the back quarter of the village and it’s surrounded by stone cottages and the school bus comes in, in the morning and picks the children up and drops them in the evening so it’s quite a busy little place at times during the day but it’s lovely. It’s a really lovely place to be.
WERMAN: And the phone box, the library is in the square, right?
FISHER: The phone box is in the square and it sits in a little memorial garden so it’s a very pretty spot and it would have been a shame for that box to have gone into disrepair really.
WERMAN: And our listeners can also see photographs of the phone box and I think also your cottage there in Westbury sub-Mindip, Janet Fisher.
FISHER: Yes, the place that I’m speaking from now, is actually, you can see it. There’s a picture of the phone box with a queue of people waiting to go in when it was inaugurated and my cottage is in the background. There’s a bay window there and that’s where I am now.
WERMAN: Janet Fisher, resident of Westbury sub-Mindip. Thank you, good to talk.
FISHER: Thank you, Marco.
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Wonderful story. As I sat in my driveway, I could visualize the phone box and these quaint little cottages in this english village. Born, raised, and living in Dallas, I feel a world away, until I listened to your story.
Thanks
Jeff
This was a very refreshing story to hear, rather than more bad news!
Mahalo! (Thank you in Hawaiian)
Just a small correction to the transcript:-
The village of Westbury sub Mendip is situated on the southern slope of the Mendip Hills between Cheddar & the smallest English city of Wells, all in the county of Somerset. From my experience it must be one of the friendliest villages in England.
Pete —
Good catch, thanks. I’ve made the correction.
In the tanscript’s paragraph where I describe the village, the hills are called The Mendip Hills and they are beautiful, going west into the sea at Brean Down about 22 miles from here.
The hills in the paragraph describing this village are called The Mendips and travel west to the Bristol Channel – about 22 miles away.
Our village website shows pictures of the village.
http://www.westbury-sub-mendip.org.uk/current/