I remember my father using Shan Tung enamel & also him sending me to Ellis & Powell in Grange Rd. to buy some timber. He wanted some 3" X 1" softwood & told me to ask for Archangel Red, which was the best quality deal.
Absolutely fascinating - thank you. I like the telegraphic address for British Leather - not easy to forget "hides" !! Which provokes the thought that back then Birkenhead still had a manual telephone exchange - ours was Birkenhead 103, but sometime in the 50's they opened an automatic exchange on the corner of Cearns Rd and Palm Grove (?). The GPO came round and fitted dials to the phones and we became Claughton 5103. Also we went to the "opening night" when they showed us all the Strowger switch gear and even which was ours !! They still had manual operators because you couldn't dial places like Heswall and had to be put through manually.
I wonder what the lowest Birkenhead telephone number was? Perhaps they started at 100!
I don't know about Birkenhead itself but I do know about Upton, in 1896 there were only 8 telephones in Upton, and they had numbers 2401 to 2408 (no exchange).
By 1911 Upton was on the Birkenhead exchange and the lowest number in Upton was Birkenhead 551.
By 1920 Upton had its own exchange, and the lowest number was Upton 1, when the first automatic exchange was installed, the lowest number became UPTon 0001. In 1952 the exchange name changed to Arrowebrook, making the lowest number ARRowebrook 0001.
Thanks. Presumably the 'automatic' system needed 4 digits. In Lower Bebington well into the '60s the exchange was Rock Ferry, and it was a shared line when first connected in the '50s!
On the subject of low phone numbers... Stayed at a guest house which was also the local Post Office in a tiny village called Bunmahon in the south of Ireland. This was the late 1970's. The receipt for a night's stay had the phone number on it. Yes, you guessed it... BUNMAHON 1. !! Returned there on the honeymoon a couple of years later. Now automatic and BUNMAHON 201 !!
I worked at a place in Neston in the 60's. Still a manual exchange then. NESTON 89.
