Telegraph pole

Image: © Bob Harvey Taken: 23 Dec 2012

Back when the Westfield estate was planned the idea that every house would have a telephone was laughable. We were still installing party lines back then, to economise on apparatus and to offer people a low cost alternative. It was assumed that one house in five on an estate like this would have a phone, and one in twenty on a "working class" estate. Thus telephone wiring was not an essential service like water or electricity, and the builders had no obligation to provide it to each house. The GPO paid for ducts and DPs and Cabs to the estate out of its own (government) funds, and did not want to pay for underground connections to each home. This the last (drop-wire) connection is from telephone poles. When Beech Avenue was extended in the 1990s the rules had changed. If you look at Image you will see no such overhead wiring.

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