Here’s a view of the Royal Mail sorting office at The Quadrant, directly opposite Hoylake station. I reckon it’s quite a nice building really, rather 1930’s looking – how about you, what do you think? Looking at the satellite view in google maps it looks like it’s a flat roofed building and there’s a car park behind. Think I might have to have a nose around the back at some point!
Has it always been owned by Royal Mail or did it have a previous life? Is it just offices upstairs? I look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments!
Photo taken back in January, 2010.
The telephone exchange was on the first floor. It was GPO policy to make all buildings flat roofed so you could expand upwards as the need for telephones grew.
Hoylake was, I beleive the last town in Britain to move from manual switchboard to automatic equipment. (Kingston on Hull may have lasted longer, but they were a private company). My uncle talked of seeing equipment sign-written for Hoylake dispersed throughout the world during WWII.
I forgot to add that the automatic exchange was built next to the Cottage Hospital and mentioned elsewhere in this site – the plaque says 1966.
Also you can see the telephone wires (a lot of them!) on posts in the background of the old Hoylake station featured October last year
http://www.hoylakejunction.com/friday-photo-091016
You needed two wires for each conversation, but with the cunning use of transformers you could add a “phantom” circuit using someone else’s pair of wires for one of your lines, and a different pair for your second line. Trust me, it worked so well you could add “super-phantoms” but that explanation would give you brain damage!
I’ve always known it as the telephone exchange and the main post office. So think it was built by GPO (as it then was)
The door at the front of the building was the entrance for the staff who worked upstairs in the telephone exchange, and also for the staff who worked in the Post Office at the side . The door to the right in the picture was the entrance to the Post Office. I worked in the Post Office as a post office counter clerk from 1958 to 1964 when I left to get married. The sorting office was at the back of the building. There was a hatch inside the post office where you could speak to the postmen. There was also a door at the back of the counter leading to a rest room for the counter staff, and also the sorting office. There was a small car park at the back of the sorting office for GPO vans, bikes etc where I used to park my little blue Vespa motor scooter.
Yes, Hoylake went straight from the manual exchange (‘number please ?’) to full-blown STD in the middle of 1969, without ever going through the previous ‘dial’ stage. It was a relief for us in one special way. The number of the Liverpool gas company used to be ‘Royal 8212’ which the operator frequently interpreted as ‘Hoylake 212’ which was our number. After June 1969 we were saved from having to descend two flights of stairs half a dozen times a day to listen to a perplexed scouser complaining that there had been a ‘gas escape’. Occasionally we also got calls intended for the electricity board, which was Hoylake 202.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a ginger cat which visited and was fed at the station, the post office and Smith’s Garage. It was very puzzled at the beginning of 1971 when the postal strike meant the Post Office was closed for several weeks.
mum worked as an operator at Hoylake
dad was a GPO engineer and covered most of the exchanges on Wirral but always tried to end the day at Hoylake
Your post has made me revisit this photo. Its really quite an iconic building. I so remember the days of asking the operator for the number. I had an aunt who’s exchange was Burley Gate (in Herefordshire) the operator would always quip “Pearly Gates” and think it was an original joke! Guess they also listened in from time to time- so different now with our mobile phones. Sue