Week 137, British Electric

Let's go back in time.  Back to when homes had as many as two electrical appliances, both of them lightbulbs, to the decades before Tricity ovens drove an upsurge in demand for the supply of electricity.

In 1910 only 2% of British homes had electricity, by the start of the 1920's this was still under 10%.

In the early years of the last century The British Electric Transformer Co. were contracted to provide a quantity of these transformers in the South of England and another quantity of them for the North West.

Generally it was the more well-off that could afford to run electricity, although not all of these transformers are in prosperous areas.  Whether these area were prosperous a century ago is another matter.  The one pictured below however is in the Sheffield suburb of Ranmoor, one of the most affluent areas in the country, and almost directly next to the substantially sized Ranmoor Hall.  Ranmoor Hall having many rooms, and probably more than two lightbulbs, was almost certainly part of the reason why there is one of these transformers at the end of their road.

Standardisation of voltage and frequency, and the National Grid, did for these charming pillars what sticking your head in the oven did for town gas.

There are three of these boxes in Sheffield, one in Audenshaw, two in Surrey and one in Wimbledon.  All are Grade II listed.  There are possibly more lurking within the pages of the Historic England listings and out on the streets but I have yet to locate them.

Here are links to the Historic England listings. 

And here are some fusty old ceramic and copper relics inside.

For official/internal use only:

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