THE police had to be called in after South Hams protesters staged a tractor blockade and kiosk 'stand in' to try to foil BT's bid to snatch their village's red telephone box.

East Prawle village councillors and the parish council clerk used a tractor to try to block workmen from getting to the phone box in Higher Park on the edge of the village.

When that failed parish clerk and local farmer Roger Tucker stepped inside the kiosk and refused to come out as the workmen prepared to hoist it on to the rear of their truck.

The stand-off lasted more than an hour until two police officers, who had been called by the workmen, persuaded the protesters to give up the blockade and let the box go.

Now the parish council, which had been trying to buy the prized telephone box under BT's adopt-a-box scheme, has launched a new battle with the giant telecommunications company to have the kiosk returned.

"We want this box. It is part of the village's heritage," Mr Tucker said.

"We are still pressing ahead to buy it and hopefully we will get the same box returned to us."

The telephone kiosk is a K6 box designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935. The parish council has been pressing for months now to stop BT from removing it and had begun the process of saving it by adopting it for £1 — although the telephone equipment would be removed.

The council is already adopting two boxes at nearby Ford and Chivelstone which were also on the BT hit list.

The councillors were alerted at around 4.30pm on Wednesday when workmen showed up and began removing the telephone equipment from the box.

Mr Tucker along with parish council chairman David Hampden-Smith and parish councillor Tim Blyth raced to the box with a tractor to try to stop them while they attempted to negotiate with BT to get the removal suspended.

"I stood in the box and then they called the police," said Mr Tucker.

The calls to BT proved unsuccessful and when the police arrived Mr Tucker was forced to leave the box.

The workmen took the kiosk along with others they are removing — both old and modern — from the South Devon area. The red boxes are destined for a BT storage area in Coventry, Mr Tucker said he had been told.

The workmen even broke up the concrete plinth beneath the box and carted the rubble off, he added.

Mr Tucker said the village is adamant it wants the box saved.

He said that 38 years ago, his wife Vicky's waters broke inside it as she phoned her mother to say she was in labour.

"She is quite sentimental about it and last night she was crying about it," he said.

A police spokesman confirmed that two officers had been called to the village at around 5.30pm to deal with a 'dispute' over the ownership of the box.

"We were there to prevent a breach of the peace and the box was removed," he added.

A spokesman for BT said that the company was planning to investigate what had happened at East Prawle over the removal of the village kiosk.

He added: "This was a kiosk that was due to be removed and it was a kiosk that BT was perfectly entitled to remove."