Issue 118 - the Pembury Village Website

PEMBURY IN THE PASTBrian Aylard from Highfield Close wrote to us by email about making telephone calls in the 1950sAS PER OUR telephone chat just now, and after reading Mary Standen’s splendid BackIn Time booklet, I can (nearly) remember the old telephone exchange at Pembury.In 1950 it was in the old Post Office building next to E R Walker, Drapers, at the top ofLower Green Road.“The building is now the NatWest Bank branch and Walker’s is now the Chinese take-away.I had started working as a ‘Youth in Training’ with the Post Office Telephones and was withthe local linesman who looked after the Pembury exchange. This exchange was one of thelast still functioning in the country with the old local battery system. This meant that eachhousehold lucky enough to have a telephone needed a rechargeable accumulator batterystanding alongside the phone.To make a call there was a wooden box containing an electric generator with a handlewhich had to be turned to send a voltage back to the exchange to drop down a flap whichdisplayed the caller’s number and sounded a buzzer to alert the operator. The linesman hadto visit each subscriber regularly to change the accumulators and recharge them at theexchange. This he did on his bicycle with the accumulators (I think they were calledLaclanché cells) carried in a box on the carrier frame over the back wheel. Shortly after thisa new exchange was installed in a first floor room at 31 High Street. I remember having togo in the door at the side of the building and up to what is now living accommodation towork in the new exchange. This facility remained for several years until an automaticexchange was built in Hastings Road. This building is still used by BT but is not thePembury exchange which is now a section of the Tunbridge Wells exchange.”Pembury Post Office at an earlier time. At the top left you can see the bell sign indicating thattelephone service was available from the Post Office27