Not Thames Water again

There was a fine hole in the middle of East Street yesterday afternoon, complete with traffic lights; for a change, nothing to do with Thames Water.

I thought electricity and/or data cabling for the new self-storage block going up on the old Majestic site, last noticed at reference 1.

I then paused at the supposed tree of heaven outside the old telephone exchange - to take an interest in the brickwork rather than the botany. Which looked as if it had been cleaned up and possibly repointed at some point. But when was it built in the first place?

I read at reference 2:

'... By now the automatic exchange could no longer be expanded. As demand was certain to continue to increase a new exchange building was needed, and as Epsom was about 14 miles from central London this had to be manually operated. The new exchange was in East Street, Epsom, and was equipped with the then-standard CB No. 1 switchboard. The cut-over from the automatic exchange took place on 20 July 1932 and the Station Road exchange was closed. Local newspapers have been checked but, surprisingly, no reference has been found to subscribers’ reactions to being converted back to dial-less telephones and slower connexion times....'.

So if the brickwork, near a hundred years old, has not been repointed, it has done pretty well. Maybe the corner of the building was damaged by a bomb?

Reference 3 tells me that Epsom did suffer bomb damage during the war and Gemini provides some more background. If he is right, records probably are available - although they would probably take time and trouble to track down and inspect. Maybe tomorrow.

Incidentally, Gemini is quite full of the high standard of Post Office buildings of that era.

The Screwfix whitebeam, nearly clear of its leaves now.

First Line Recovery (FLR) with its custom registration plates, still very much in evidence outside the Ford Centre. Memory says that I used FLR for No.24, but I cannot presently trace that record.

I forgot to check on the trolley that was in the stream at the junction of Hook Road and Longmead Road.

And while I went on to win at Scrabble, helped along by a couple of flukily big scores early in the game, totalling to some 150 points, we did not make it to the all-important threshold of 600 points combined score. Missed by about twenty points. Another fluke would have done it!

Should you care to check, bear in mind that we are using the relatively new dictionary from Longmans, rather than the century old OED. Its coverage is significantly different.

PS: after breakfast: I have now run No.24 down at FLR, so memory was right about that. And as it says at reference 4, I was not using the proper post naming system at that time, which may have confused my earlier search. I also find that I took No.30 from the same place - but they have not been good for the still missing No.39.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/a-quiet-sunday.html.

Reference 2: https://www.britishtelephones.com/epsom.htm.

Reference 3: https://eehe.org.uk/33439/tucker1/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-good-afternoon.html.