Electric dreams not shared by every villager
»
LIKE many other Gloucestershire villages, Bishop’s Cleeve had no mains electricity until the 1930s. And even then the innovation wasn’t welcomed by all.
One villager resisted the appeal of having his house wired up, until eventually a kind relative paid for the installation. After a year, the electricity board, puzzled by the fact that his meter barely registered a reading, sent an official to look into the matter.
The villager explained that he turned on the electric light only long enough to find the matches for his oil lamp. Electricity came to Gloucester in 1900, but apart from the appearance of arc lamps in the city centre, the first of which stood at the Cross on the corner of Westgate and Southgate Streets, its impact was hardly noticed.
In fact the prospect of electricity in the home was one that filled most local people with apathy. Nobody had a fridge, TV, radio, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, microwave, food or word processor. Oil or gas were perfectly adequate for lighting. The coal fired range kept the pot boiling. Who needed electricity?
Which reminds us that technological advances are all very well, but only if they serve a purpose.
Take the introduction of the telephone for instance. One of Britain’s first demonstrations of the telephone took place in Gloucester in October 1873.
A crowd of the curious gathered in the School of Science and Art in Brunswick Road to see Dr Bond, the local medical officer of health, speak to his assistant Mr Loxten, who was in another room, via the phone. This he did successfully.
However, when the United Telephone Company tried to sell phones to the people of Gloucester there were no takers, for the obvious reason that if you’re one of the only people with a phone, who are you going to call?
Some years later Gloucester’s first trunk line became operational enabling communication with Bristol. The line was officially opened by the city mayor, Mr R Vasser-smith and column inches galore were devoted to the event in The Citizen, describing in detail the turn of events.
The Mayor spoke to his opposite number in Bristol and envisioned a time in the not too distant future when it might be possible to converse via the phone with people in such far flung places as Swansea.
Then when his worshipful put the receiver down, other city dignitaries were offered the chance to try the speaking tube for themselves, but very few could think of anything to say. One whistled “Rule Britannia”. Another sang a music hall favourite of the time entitled “Tommy make room for your uncle”. And the reporter noted that “facetious remarks on sundry topics” had been made.
Despite such excitements, the city remained a phone-free zone until 1887 when an advertising campaign in the Gloucester Journal prompted 16 private and business users to sign up. The television era came to Gloucestershire in August 1938. Prior to that it hadn’t been possible to transmit words and pictures over a distance of more than 30 miles from the BBC transmitter at Alexandra Palace, London.
But in that year tests were conducted by the West Glos Power Company in conjunction with Marconi to bring the novel pleasures of the box to the county. The first programme seen locally was a variety show starring
George Robey, which was watched by the handful of people conducting the test and no one else because nobody had a TV.
Not until the Coronation in 1953 did sales of televisions begin to take off. And even then sets were startlingly expensive, programmes were only broadcast for a few hours a day and much of the viewing output comprised interludes such as “The Potter’s Wheel”, or “The Watermill”.
A final fiasco gleaned from the pages of The Gloucester Journal was reported when the Great Western Railway (GWR) abandoned its seven feet broad gauge.
All other railway companies in the country ran on tracks four feet eight and half inches apart and the GWR finally agreed to fall into step.
In consequence an auction took place in Gloucester of GWR rolling stock comprising seven first class railway carriages, five composites, six second class carriages, six third class carriages, three carriage trucks, three horse boxes, one passenger engine, one goods engine; 29 high sided wagons, eight low sided wagons and a six wheeled timber truck.
As all the above could only run on broad gauge track - and there was no longer any broad gauge track, you won’t be surprised to hear there were no bidders at the sale.