Inspired by a talking bench on the Isle of Dogs, volunteers are a step closer to converting a village's red telephone box into a story-telling centre.

Freshly-painted, newly-paned and cleaned up, the old BT phone box in Tattingstone, now owned by the parish, is set to tell the story of Alton Water reservoir and live in the affected villages before being deliberately flooded.

Historian and author Jane Kirk has been instrumental in helping to gather a plethora of maps, photographs and meticulously recorded information of events, before, during and after life in the Alton valley before the reservoir sprang to life and told Nub News, how it all came about.

Jane recalls how a walk near her home on the banks of the River Thames, provided the inspiration behind the creation, which is part of the Land and Shore heritage creative arts project to rediscover lost communities, being run by Suffolk Archives under the banner of Sharing Suffolk Stories.

"This is a unique use of a phone box, I don't think there is another like it in the country," Jane said. "I used to live on the Isle of Dogs and there was an art installation, which included a button on a bench, which gave background sounds and a person telling us the history of the docks.

"So, when the Suffolk Record office got in touch about 18 months ago due to my history and told me as part of their Heritage Lottery Funding for The Hold in Ipswich, they had to do a Sharing Suffolk stories, Land and Shore project, I remembered those benches and the idea was formed.

"We wanted to do something that was fun, innovative and creative in telling our story."

Although not a professional historian, June is renowned for her research of the former Samford Union workhouse, then St Mary's hospital, which is now houses, to mark its 250th anniversary in 2016.

She also wrote the history behind the effects on Tattingstone as a village when they lost so many men during World War One.   

When the record office made it known it was looking at three themes for their Land to Shore project, which looked at Dunwich, Lowestoft beach village and Alton Water, Jane was the obvious choice and jumped at the opportunity be involved..

This has been a collective effort with Jane using her persuasive talent to rope in television star presenter and Stutton resident Griff Rhys Jones who has narrated an article from the 1894 edition of the East Anglian Daily Times.

Volunteers have also worked with an arts group including the Voice cLoud working with Rogue Shanty Buoys, who went into Tattingstone Primary School, and John Royle from Chronicle Stories, who is an expert in cataloguing digital stories and has worked with the likes of local village recorders Vic Scott, and the late Phillip Willis.

"Griff is the icing on the cake, talking about finding eels in a fishpond," said Jane. "Ours is a living history because we have people who were alive during that time, so we had oral records is too.