Cirencester's top ten telephone numbers (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Cirencester's top ten telephone numbers

At last all our numbers have come up!

Unfortunately not the lottery numbers but we now know following on from previous articles, the first ten numbers in Cirencester's original telephone directory.

In fact we have more than ten because there were exchange and party lines.

It appears that the National Telephone Company which was taken over by the Post Office in 1912 first brought telephone apparatus to Cirencester in the 1890s. The numbers were allocated starting from the post office's own No 1.

We are grateful to Stuart Darnley of Lechlade who has delved through the 1907 and 1912 directory to add the missing Cirencester No 6 along with some subsidiary numbers which we did not know about.

We now know the top ten to be as follows: public call boxes 1 Post Office 1 Black Jack Street Exchange and party lines 1x Lawson Whatley & Co, Engineers etc Council Chambers 1y L J Mathews, Cycle and Motor Engineers, 139 Cricklade Street; 2 John Jefferies and Son Ltd, florists, The Royal Nurseries and Seed Establishment, 2 Castle Street; 3 Chesterton Farm; 4 Baily and Woods printers and book sellers, 19 Market Place; 5 Allen Raymond Ltd, Barton Mills; 5x Samuel Clappen, county outfitters, Cricklade Street; 5y Albert Green, fruiter, 81 Castle Street; 6 Captain J G Dugdale, The Abbey; 6x Moody, fishmonger, Market Place; 6y M Tovey, ironmonger, 121 Dyer Street; 7 Mullings Ellett & Co, Solicitors, 12 Park Street; 8 Dale Forty, pianos and music, 23 Market Place; 9 Wilts & Glos Standard, 74 Dyer Street; 10 Wilts and Glos Standard, 74 Dyer Street (2nd line); 10 Russell Swanwick, Royal Agricultural College Farm.

Most of these numbers survived until STD Subscriber Trunk Dialling reached the town in the early 1960s, the Queen having made the first STD call from Bristol to Edinburgh on December 5 1958.

Cirencester florists John Jefferies and Sons mourned the loss of their special number being the first private subscriber in town, the post office being No 1 and used it in an advertisement.

It is also perhaps interesting that their address was 2 Castle Street. There can be few businesses or individuals with the same house number as telephone number.

The advertisement described how there was only one handset on the premises. This was on the ground floor and jealously guarded by the head shopman".

If the call was for the general office on the floor above, he would blow into a speaking tube consisting of a lead pipe sunk into the wall and at the other end a shrill whistle would sound.

On being summoned, the head clerk would put down his pen, negotiate a maze of Dickensian-date desks, run down the stairs at high speed, answer the call then ascend the stairs again to return to the letters he wrote and books he kept in a beautifully flowing hand, not forgetting to turn the handle of the telephone furiously to ring off.

This he did many times a day even in his later years.

Fortunately for this agile gentleman the advertisement announces that to keep up with the times they now had the latest Private Automatic Exchange installed with its number Cirencester 2202 and many extensions within the establishment replacing the manual switchboard and the necessity to run up and down stairs all day.

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