Hertford Street

Unfortunately not the clearest of pictures, but here's a view of Hertford Street in 1950!

Here's a view further up Hertford St of the bridge and the Empire

Here's another pre-war shot:

Anyone know what the "box" on the extreme right of the image is?

Could it be a police box with phone inside? There was one at the Binley Road end of Church Lane, Stoke near the Rectory in the 40s-50s. Later they looked more like a Tardis. They were blue.

I`ve blown it up and blown it up until it has become a blur and I am not sure, because it is the "lid" that gets me, it sort of looks detached, i.e. with a ventilation space at the top. Could it have been a "loo"? Apparently there was one at street corners in London and the urine was collected and sent north to the coast near Newcastle and used in the cloth dying process. The collection of this and transportation down the Thames led to the phrase "taking the p*ss"

What about a waste bin? Or letter box. Shame we don't know the colour!

Here's an earlier view from Broadgate:

I've done a bit of editing on the image to make it a little clearer (I hope). Is it something to do with the tram operation as it appears to be aligned with where the single track splits into two?

I don't know what it is, but here's another view:

Aha! It's for leaning one's bicycle on!

A couple of thoughts, commercial post box for the nearby businesses, but maybe too tall, something to do with the adjacent Curtis and Beamish printing works, like a docking point for a tanker to pump ink through there?

I know very little about trams but a quick look on the net suggests it could be a 'Feeder Box' which had the function of a junction box and switch box combined. A tram's overhead supply was split into sections to allow for repairs and so the individual sections could be shut down without closing the whole system. Each 'Feeder Box' tapped off a cable running along the street, usually underground, and then passed the power supply through a switch to the overhead supply. There is a photograph of a similar structure at the Crich Tramway Museum but it does not say what it is. That one is marked 'BTH' which signifies electrical equipment. Hope this helps. I may of course be totally wrong.

Could it be a 'Lucy Box'? Used to supply electricity to the trams and later contained a telephone? They were made in Wolverhampton.

Have just been looking through some Library Pictures having entered 'Trams'. C00151, C00152 & C04052 all show trams at the railway station. On the right-hand side of the picture there is a similar box. Also in picture C05182 bottom of Hertford Street, there is a postbox on the left-hand side nearer to Warwick Row, but maddeningly our mystery box is not in that picture! It does look earlier though, so this could be the reason.