A visit to Preston on our Modernist Walks would not be complete without a visit to Telephone House.
Local enthusiast George Sharples, a chemist by trade who was familiar with telegraph engineering, also had ambitions in this field and successfully applied for a licence to operate from his premises at 7 Fishergate.
His Preston Telephonic Exchange opened a few weeks later, having recruited local businesses who at first were reluctant to move away from the highly efficient telegraph message services and embrace the new technology.
Things progressed quite rapidly after that and by 1886 Sharples had sold his business to the county operators, who in turn were taken over by the National Telephone Company in 1889. Within a year the £9 subscription rate offered by Sharples had increased to £12 – a familiar tale. Within three more years this organisation had set up its telephone exchange in Guildhall Street and a decade later moved operations to the old Preston Gas Company offices in Glover Street, where the multi-storey Avenham car park now stands.
Despite the NTC being taken over in 1912 by the Post Office, the Preston Telephone Exchange remained at the Glover Street premises until 1931, when an automatic telephone system was installed in the General Post Office building in the Market Place. Subscribers now had the freedom to dial most calls themselves. At the official launch of the new system it was stated that 15,000 calls were handled daily in Preston.
From the mid-1940s the increase in telephones was dramatic, with modern technology and underground cables leading to greater efficiency. A reflection of this progress was seen locally in June 1964 when the main Preston telephone exchange was moved to the purpose-built structure on Moor Lane. The era of trunk dialling had arrived and by 1980 two out of three homes within the Preston Telephone Area had a telephone installed.
Images and further information Lancashire Post.
Image – Norwyn Photographics
Twixt Walker Street and Moor Lane the mighty BT Building – Telephone House by Building Design Partnership, 1960-64.
A decent office block with rough patterned concrete end walls.
Pevsner
The front elevation was re-clad in 1992 the back is intact
BDP’s founder Professor Sir George Grenfell Baines, known affectionately as GG, was born in 1908 and set up in practice as an architect in Preston in 1937.
Four years later he teamed up with two other Preston practices and the Grenfell Baines Group was born. Expansion in various locations in the UK continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s and in 1951 GG was the only northern architect appointed to design a building for the Festival of Britain in London.
In 1961, his long cherished ambition of establishing the world’s first interdisciplinary practice was realised and Building Design Partnership was founded. It was a successful formula and on the occasion of his retirement in 1974 GG’s advice was
“keep going, getting better.”
Modern Mooch 