Alexa turn on the light!
Dedicated to all those electricians involved with house wiring, concealed cabling, wifi switching and house electrical house management
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It was not always thus. Mains Electricity was only introduced to Framilode Passage,Priding, Overton and Arlingham in the mid 1950’s. Although Arlingham had enjoyed
Its own private Electricity supply which covered the church, chapel, the Red Lion and the shop plus about fifteen homes all at 110volt by the good services of my uncle Bernard Shaw. Basic though it was, it gave villagers light, but no power for a long time before the Midlands Electricity Board came on the scene. Powered off a large Lister Generator it suffered one major downside. It could not be run at night because of the noise so when Bernard went to bed the generator went off and Thank you and Goodnight everything went dark.
Once it was announced that Mains electricity would be brought to the area there was a scramble to get every house wired . Every home was cabled on the surface with cable cleats, carelessly hammered into wherever they could. My experience was at Rosemead at Priding which was a reasonably modern bungalow. The total wiring ran something like 3 fifteen amp round sockets in the whole of the house all brown and mounted on a varnished wooden mounts one for the new Berry’s Magicoal three bar fire
One for the television, again new and in a cabinet with doors to shut it away at night and the third in the kitchen for the new Swan Electric Kettle. That was all the power done! Every room had a single light rose in the ceiling (in brown of course) with cotton flex down to a bayonet fitting with a clear 60 watt lamp. A few rooms had the luxury of two way switching on round brown switches again mounted on a wooden varnished mount with a slot cut in the top for the cable. Both bedrooms had a suspended switch over the bed with live wires coming down to the switch…none of your string pull cords for safety. The radio remained unchanged as battery powered with the wet accumulator being changed by Mrs Evans from Frampton every two weeks. In the dining room we went overboard and had a five branch hanging light with five fifteen watt clear candle bulbs …this is modern electrics. I am sure almost all the other homes in the area were very similar.