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Did you ever use these phone boxes?


Sheffield History

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There were plenty of them but at busy times you still had to wait to get in one.  I regularly 'phoned my girl friend from there, just a handy location and it was a very busy area at the time, the GPO being very well used.

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I used them occasionally….and, of course, back then mobile phones were available in science fiction only.😁

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I used them in the sixties, don't remember there being that many boxes though.

I was installing a water main for the foundation work at the new British Home Stores on Castlegate, had to phone the boss to bring me  some extra valves for the job,  the phone's outside the GPO in Fitzalan Square were the closest to the site.

The car in the photograph is an A reg, so I guess it was taken after 1983.

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On 28/06/2022 at 18:02, Hopman said:

It's probably something to do with the GPO being the phone company years ago.

Yes definitely, because my dad worked for the GPO and he worked originally on installing phones from there, but later on the technical side of telex and phone terminals in Maltravers Road workshops. The GPO was changed to BT around the time he died in 1981 although the Post Office had taken over the building before that.  My mate also worked in the building for the Post Office until he took early retirement in 2018.

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I didn't use the phone boxes but did go inside to use the Post Office; -  it was quite palatial.

( A Reg = 1963?)

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On 28/06/2022 at 11:17, Sheffield History said:

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I would have thought it was because it was the head post office in Sheffield, it was always very busy with very long queues inside every day, especially in the forties and fifties, when I was a teenager my mates and I met some girls from Hull while we were on holiday and they told us to make free phone calls to Hull all you had to do was to tap the number you wanted on the phone rest , if the number had a zero you just tapped the rest ten times and it worked, we phoned the girls in Hull a couple of times a week.

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Rover1949….If you remember back in 1983 we had a letter at the beginning of the number plate (prefix)and 20 years or so earlier….one at the end (suffix).Both intended to indicate year of first registration….and sometimes boosting sales!

 

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13 hours ago, tozzin said:

I would have thought it was because it was the head post office in Sheffield, it was always very busy with very long queues inside every day, especially in the forties and fifties, when I was a teenager my mates and I met some girls from Hull while we were on holiday and they told us to make free phone calls to Hull all you had to do was to tap the number you wanted on the phone rest , if the number had a zero you just tapped the rest ten times and it worked, we phoned the girls in Hull a couple of times a week.

We used the tapping the phone rest trick 

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Quite right, there were two A Reg years, my brain defaults to the 60s. I never grasped the logic of this sequence; why not just use 63, 64 and so on?

I remember being shown the phone tapping trick and actually got through to someone.  The problem was that we didn't know anyone with a phone and just tapped at random until it connected.

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From Sheffield Evening Telegraph 8th March 1913:


TELEPHONE KIOSKS IN SHEFFIELD
The Sheffield Highway and Sewerage Committee have resolved, subject to satisfactory details being arranged, to accede to the application of the Postmaster-General to fix telephone kiosks in the following streets:- Moorhead, adjoining tram shelter ; Market Place, adjoining pillar letter box ; High Street, near junction with East Parade ; adjoining the Town Hall, at the corner of Surrey Street and Fargate ; junction of Cemetery Road with Ecclesall Road, near the Bank ; and Nursery Street.

By October 1913 an agreement had been made for a telephone cabinet to be installed in the Moorhead tramway shelter for an annual rental of 2s 6d from the Post Office and a request was made for a similar arrangement for the Hunters Bar shelter.

Previously public telephone boxes were provided in most of the hotels and post offices in the city, working on a “penny-in-the-slot” principle, they were subject to theft of the takings.

A spate of wire cutting of public telephones around the country in 1913 was attributed to Suffragettes.

The first standard public telephone kiosk introduced by the United Kingdom Post Office was produced in concrete in 1921 and was designated K1 (Kiosk No.1). This design was not of the same family as the familiar red telephone boxes.

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