Next we have a photo of a scar of one of the rediffusion cubby holes on Hartburn Walk. The new bricks mark where it was. I remember one time on FA cup final day some ghastly scoundrels somehow opened it and turned the switch off, in the hope of ruining the FA cup final coverage for the whole estate...dont know whether they were sucessful or not...
By the way, fools would put black and white electricians tape over the 'H' on HARTBURN WALK, changing it to 'FARTBURN WALK' and black electricians tape over the 'DD' on the sign of STUDDON WALK, changing it to 'STUBBON WALK' ...'The simplest things amuse the simplest of minds... '
Interesting factoid - the Rediffusion used to bring not only TV but also radio direct to the home. Each dwelling had a kind of switch on the wall with a rotary knob used to select the TV channels or radio channel required. Nowadays everyone has Sky but in those days we had 3 channels and 2 radio - that was it....
ReplyDeleteWas the estate pre-wired for telephones? I don't remember any telegraph poles although I suspect there were green boxes and concrete pillars. I can remember us having one installed, it sat on a telephone table on the 2nd landing outside the bathroom. It was Newcastle (0632) 861261 which was a shock as it was only a 5 digit number when we lived in Benwell.
ReplyDeletemaster,find out, help him...
ReplyDeleteI remember in the 70s you had to share your line with someone else, so you might pick up the phone to make a call and the other user, a complete stranger was already using the line!
I used to work for BT in the dark distant past. The estate was pre-wired for telephone - mistake they made was to use aluminum alloy wire in the cables (some newfangled idea) and this made them very unreliable.
ReplyDeleteMensforth - we never had a party line because we were posh.