A defunct phone box which has gained a new lease of life has helped villagers mark Easter celebrations.
Mike Renwick bought the traditional red kiosk from operators BT for a token £1 after they announced plans to offload it four years ago.
He made the move after he developed an attachment to the landmark, which stands next to his garden in Lochfoot, rather than allowing it to be removed as part of a programme of cuts to the traditional boxes.
Since the handover, the telephone box has been used as decorative feature to mark celebrations such as Halloween and Christmas, as well as to display artwork created by youngsters at the village school.
But now the installation has been the focus of Easter celebrations in the village.
Mike told the News: “A letter originally came through to the community council saying the box was going to be removed and I consulted them about buying it.
“It’s a bit of a feature because it joins onto the garden and if anyone was looking for the house, I always said next to the telephone box. There was quite a lot of paperwork to do to get it handed over but I bought it for a pound and tidied it up a bit.”
He added: “I always wanted to use it for the community and we’ve had various things in it, including a Hallowe’en theme and working with the school. We came up with topics for the kids to create pictures and paintings of, one of those was animals, and we displayed them in it.”
Now the latest project to be unveiled was an Easter quest which saw the box being filled with balloons and a giant Easter egg.
Lucky winner Jeanette Gallacher scooped the prize after her guess of 106 balloons came closest to the correct amount of 103.
