The Old GPO On Flat Street

[JOHN HABS]

Late 50's - early 60's :

Has anyone on SF ever been in Flat Street GPO ( not the postal side but the communications section ) when it was fully operational and manned by numerous switchboard operators ?

Having started threads and made contributions to Victoria Street / Broomspring Lane,

Glossop Road Swimming Baths and Springfield Junior School, I thought back to a time when Springfield School organised an outing for the children to the GPO, to have a look around it

and have explained to us what went on from the calls coming into the switchboards and the operators diverting them to the appropriate locations.

We were also told about the part the telegraph poles and ceramic line parts played.

Often wonder if those massive switchboards are still in the building even though its been empty for some time, or if they were ripped out when telephone exchanges were modernised - I believe the building is now a listed one.

[fatrajah]

Operator services were transferred to a brand new state of the art switchboard housed in a building on the corner of trafalgar street & wellington street. This was in about 1972. By this time STD had been available for several years, so relatively few trunk calls were handled by operators. The number of operators needed had declined accordingly. I would imagine that the old switchboards at flat street were recovered & scrapped shortly afterwards.

 

Of course time marches on & the "new" switchboard has long since gone. I believe operator services are now located on an industrial estate somewhere.

[gluedtopc]

The old switchboards were removed in the early 70s and I was one of the engineers who did the work. We were told to be carefull with all the wiring which connected them, as they were being sold to Hull Corporation tTelephone Department (Hull ran its own phones). The Telex exchange was also located at the HPO at that time, I sometimes worked there, and the date on some of the equipment was 1939!!