Recalling Durham's famous - and unique police box - and what the students once did to it with sand

Every city has a cathedral; every hillock once had a castle plonked on top if.

But nowhere else in the world had a police box in the centre of its market place in which a bobby sat, controlling traffic which he couldn’t see as it converged from three directions on the medieval streets.

Durham did.

Indeed, when transport minister Richard Nugent – later Lord Nugent of Guildford – unveiled the new box in 1957, he said it was unique in the world.

And it seems to have worked – apart, that is, from when it was targeted by students.

The Great North Road ran through Durham. From the south, it came down New Elvet, over Elvet Bridge into Fleshergate and then the Market Place where it swung east down Silver Street, over Framwellgate Bridge and then north to Newcastle up North Road.

Mixed in with this was the traffic from Sunderland arriving via Claypath into the Market Place, plus there was all the local traffic that just wanted to push up Saddler Street to Palace Green to visit the cathedral.

Both the bridges and most of the streets were so narrow that they could only accommodate traffic going in one direction.

The police box, in Durham Market Square, which was installed in 1932

So in 1932 a cylindrical police box, with a domed roof, was installed in the Market Place to bring order to the chaos.

But because the policeman could not see either Elvet Bridge or Framwellgate Bridge from his vantage spot, he had to guess: he would allow the traffic time to clear one way before allowing it to proceed in the other.

It must still have been chaos.

An amazing picture from Michael Richardson's Gilesgate Archive showing the old cylindrical box under demolition in 1957 with a temporary police box - or ice cream kiosk or programme sellers' shed - nearby

In late 1957, the cylindrical box was replaced by a larger, squarer box with television screens in it. The screens were connected to cameras on poles above the bridges so that the policeman could now see what was happening in his previously blind spots, and traffic lights were introduced to help him regulate the flow.

A traffic camera overlooking Elvet Bridge circa 1957

All this came into operation on Tuesday, December 31, 1957, and was the first CCTV-controlled traffic system in the country, and possibly the world.

In its own right, it became as much of a tourist attraction as the cathedral. Well, nearly.

The box stood in Durham Market Place and controlled the traffic going up to the cathedral. This picture was taken in February 1975

Those were very different times because when the policeman finished his shift at the end of the day, he left and locked his box, leaving traffic to fend for itself in the narrow streets, reversing and cursing.

Following the box’s appearance in Memories 539, Sam Coates in Hurworth told us how vehicles from Darlington in the south that wanted to go up to the cathedral entered the Market Place where the driver stuck his arm out of the window with one digit raised which he twiddled in a circular motion.

This was not at all rude as it indicated to the policeman that the driver wanted to spin round the box and head back up Saddler Street.

And Caroline Peacock of Hamsterley got in touch with a Rag Week story from her student days when pranksters took advantage of the policeman’s overnight absence and filled the box with sand.

One version of this story is set in 1957 when the cylindrical box was turned into a sandpit, but Caroline – a former High Sheriff of Durham who clearly does not condone such behaviour – vividly remembers it from 1967 or 1968.

“I can still see the hapless policeman sitting cross-legged on top of all the sand, still doing his job until colleagues arrived with shovels to clear it all away,” she says.

“It was probably during the same Rag Week that students painted red footprints from Lord Londonderry’s statue across the cobbles to the toilets in the Market Hall and back again.”

Sadly, those were the days before everyone carried a camera in their pocket so there is no photographic record of this outrage – unless, of course, you have one…

The 1960s were a time of great transport change with the A1 being built to the east of Durham and then the A690 being built straight through it.

The destruction of the Durham police box, November 1975

With the opening of those roads, through traffic no longer used the medieval streets and Market Place and so the box became redundant. It was removed in November 1975, and now the only attraction worth seeing in Durham is a 1,000-year-old cathedral...

• If you have memories of the police box, or of the students’ japes, we’d love to hear from you. Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk