Old phone connection boxes

[Brian]

Yesterday morning I was at eldest?s moving an outside tap and rerouting a TV antenna wire.

During all of this, I noticed an old, disused, telephone connection box screwed to the wall. It must have been there decades. It was probably originally outside although a porch has been added at some point and it is now inside, by the original front door opening.

The box is about 6? long, 1.5 ? wide, 0.75 ? deep. Made of brown Bakelite. It was a row of six or so twin screw connection strips in the middle.

I remember the old, matchbox sized, almost oval phone connection boxes which predated the plug in phones but I?ve never seen anything this old.

Any old GPO types out there who can date it?

I should have photographed it but I was focused on the jobs in hand at the time.

[jkn]

There are websites with images of all the old GPO gear, I am sure you will be able to find a reference there

eg:

[Bob Eager]

Try here:

[Brian]

Thank you and Bob Eager.

It looks like 20/8, I think I miss-remembered the terminal layout.

A pity there is no date guide. The old two wire (?bell wire?) drop wire is still in place but not used. Eldest wants it removed to tidy up front of house but doesn?t have a ladder. It is too secure to just pull down. The people who did the fascias etc commented it was disconnected at the top end. The current drop wire seems to be the new, round, multi-core stuff with a couple of steel cores feeding a modern modular plugin connection.

I was just curious. It must date from a time when domestic phones were few and far between. The house is a modest one - expensive these days ( as many are) but not of the kind I would expect to have a phone 50 + years back when this must have been the connection box used. We got our first phone in the 80s and it had a far more modern one.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That probably dates it to pre war or at most the 1950s - by 1960 we were in full plastics mode.

right, that is the 1960s style connector.

I cant find reference to a 6 block - 4 or 8 yes, but not 6.

These were succeeded by the oval plastic type so 'before 1960' is probably all one can say, and probably post WWII. Prior to that 'rosettes' and wood are more common

[The Natural Philosopher]

When I were a lad and these types of connectors were in use, several classes of people had telephones, and also cars. Typically the district nurse or the midwife would be on the phone, and could trundle up in a morris minor if needed. Same for doctors of course.

[Brian]

It could have been a nurse?s house. I?d not thought of that.

Growing up on a Council Estate in the NE, I don?t recall anyone having phones until I went to Grammar school and met people from the ?posh? areas.

[Colin Bignell]

My father's employers paid for him to have a telephone as he was one of the key holders for the factory. Probably in the late 50s.

[Jim Jackson]

When I were a lad, the family got the first phone in the late 1960's. We lived in a council house, and the phone was one of the first on our estate. My grandfather, a not-very affluent freelance journalist, had a phone and a car in the 1930's when that was relatively rare. But he couldn't earn his living without.

[williamwright]

Ditto. We had a four digit Doncaster number!

Bill