IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Station Road, GRANTHAM, NG33 4SJ

The shop inside features the normal commodity sliced bread, cakes, and frozen food, but also quality goods from specialist local suppliers Hambleton bread and Grasmere meats

Castle Bytham exchange. Also known as EMCABYT. I installed the STD Strowger equipment in here in 1971, one of the last installations in the UK. The building was doubled in length then - you can see the different roof line. Up until that point it had contained little except connection frames for the cables, no serious switches. It later became one of the Small Electronic exchange installations, a technology that BT refused to abbreviate in the normal manner. The interior was revamped again then. It afterwards became System X and is now 21st Century Network (21CN). So all calls from here are IP, like most of the UK. The building also houses the equipment for broadband access using ADSL2. FTTC has not yet reached the village. At some point in the upgrade between System X and 21CN the building was actually made around 2 feet wider. The extension on the northern side followed the 1950s design with kicked out eaves, although they could not match the grooved brick originally used.

Situated in Station Road, this redbrick building dates from the GPO era and has the code EMCABYT. It provides telephone and broadband services to 759 residential and 45 non-residential premises in Castle Bytham plus Careby, Clipsham, Creeton, Little Bytham, Pickworth and Stretton nearby. A square white BT warning notice and three small ventilation louvres can be seen on this building. Also, work seems to have taken place recently on altering this TE with different colour brickwork on the front and side of it. The numbering ranges of this TE are (01780) 410xxx, 411xxx, the (01780) referring to the Stamford group of nine TEs, and its postcode is NG33 4SJ.

During the opening week of the community shop they were hosting a one-day pop-up cycle repair shop run by Cliff Edge Cycles of Grantham. Wayne and Sally Priest do this all over the country, and mainly advertise their "Doctor Bike" days on social media. They had a steady stream of customers while I was there.

Openreach van at the telephone exchange.

Apart from an entirely superfluous unisex toilet symbol on the outhouse, this is the only indication of what the building in Image does. There used to be a proud little notice with the royal cipher, and the date it was built. Long gone. I hope it wasn't nicked - I've seen things like that sold to interior designers for pubs and the like. This one is in no danger of that fate.

Linaria vulgaris growing outside the new Castle Bytham shop

Common Toadflax growing next to the new shop in Castle Bytham