It might not look like Doctor Who’s Tardis, but this building is an example of the police boxes which used to be found across the Black Country.

Although it might not resemble the Time Lord’s famous way of travelling through time and space, the building is certainly from another era.

The building was spotted by pensioner Mick Coyle who discovered it following a conversation with an ex-policeman friend who tipped him off that it might still be there.

Although the building has stood empty for around 40 years and is on a piece of heavily overgrown wasteland, the structure in Lister Road, in Netherton, is still intact and the words County Borough of Dudley Police are still clearly visible.

Read the full story in the Express & Star.

It might not look like Doctor Who’s Tardis, but this building is an example of the police boxes which used to be found across the Black Country.

Although it might not resemble the Time Lord’s famous way of travelling through time and space, the building is certainly from another era.

The building was spotted by pensioner Mick Coyle who discovered it following a conversation with an ex-policeman friend who tipped him off that it might still be there.

Although the building has stood empty for around 40 years and is on a piece of heavily overgrown wasteland, the structure in Lister Road, in Netherton, is still intact and the words County Borough of Dudley Police are still clearly visible.

Mr Coyle, aged 82, from Pensnett, said he was amazed to find the police box still standing after all these years.

“I was having a conversation with an ex-policeman friend who said ‘Do you realise that there’s nothing in the borough to mark the fact there was ever a Dudley Metropolitan Police Force?’,” he said.

“He said there used to be lots of police boxes around Dudley and was sure there was one down Lister Road where he used to go and have a cup of tea.

“I decided to go down there and was amazed to find it still standing.”

The idea of the box was suggested a year after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876 by police who quickly realised the new-fangled gadget could help fight crime.

The first one was installed in Albany, New York, but it was another 14 years before the concept caught on in Britain.

The first box was unveiled in Glasgow in 1891. The boxes soon spread across the rest of Britain.

In 1929 Gilbert Mackenzie Trench was commissioned by the Metropolitan Police force to design a new-look box which is today recognised as Dr Who’s Tardis.

The typical box contained a telephone linked directly to the local station allowing officers on the beat to keep in contact with the station.

The boxes continued to play an important part in police work until the mid-1960s when they became redundant following the introduction of personal radios.

By Jon Wood