A TELEPHONE box bought for £1 by a Derbyshire parish council has been transformed into a library that is open for business 24 hours a day.

The unusual venue is lined with shelves that are currently stocked with 250 books which can be taken away to read by villagers.

Shirley Parish Council stepped in to buy the red phone box after BT announced it planned to remove it from the village, along with hundreds of others across the country in 2008.

But it has taken until now to complete the sale and turn the Derby Lane phone box, which is now valued at £3,000, into a library.

Resident Martyn Glover, of Church Lane, was the driving force behind the transformation and came up with the innovative idea.

The 53-year-old postman said: "There's no rules to this library and it's open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Since it opened we've had so many books added to it that we have almost reached capacity. The third day it was open, somebody had left a bunch of flowers inside it to show their appreciation.

"It's great. Books seem to just appear out of nowhere. When it first opened it had no kids' books, so I mentioned this to the villagers. Now it has around 90."

A mobile library will still continue to visit Shirley twice a month.

Parish councillor William Ellis said: "Martyn's the star of the show and we think it's a brilliant idea."