Blue Plaque

Today I received the final newsletter of the Retired Colleagues Association, associated with my employment in Post Office Telecommunications. This brought back many memories and it was very nice to see that although the location of where I worked no longer exists, a blue plaque now resides in that location. The final newsletter included a picture of the plaque, which I have photographed.

This plaque is located adjacent to the hotel which is built on the site of the North Block of Faraday Building. This is where I started my apprenticeship on the 1st June 1959. I worked in almost every part of Faraday Building over most of the next ten years, including the large concrete Block House, called North East Block, which was adjacent to the left side of this plaque and has now gone (under this hotel). Subsequent to this I was then transferred to the Post Office Telecommunications Engineer in Chief’s Office, in Gresham Street, a quarter mile away.

I thought it would be nice to show this plaque on Blip and share my memories with you. This location provided nearly all of the Post Office long-distance telephone communications from London to every other part of the UK and all around the world, from before World War I until 1982. Modernisation reduced the size of equipment and reduced the need for the hundreds of telephone operators who also worked there, as it was uneconomic to retain a large facility like this in Central London, less than a hundred metres from St Paul’s Cathedral.

Today, although I went to bed and got to sleep at 0300 hours in the morning, with a back problem, I awoke without it and have so far managed to avoid trapping the nerve. I must admit I have spent a large part of the day asleep and have now, having read the Newsletter, started to get to grips with the software to drive the 3D printer pictured yesterday.