Hamilton House - 13th Nov 2010 8:57pm
Originally Posted by summer01
Has anyone got piccis of hamilton house it was built say 1800s possibly early 1900s.It used to be where that ugly building on rocklane west is built now a telephone exchange .its ajacent to highfeild crescent .
I worked in that ugly building for 10 years when I was a BT engineer. In the rear yard of that building stood a four storey house which was the old manual (operator) exchange which was demolished around the mid 1980's and is probably the building you may be refering to. The ugly building in the front was built in the early 60's so that a new automatic exchange could be installed. The old building was then used as offices and stores until it became redundant.
I don't have any pictures of the old building, but I do know the wall in the front of Rock Lane West still standing was the original boundary wall of the house and the new exchange building was built on what was the Tennis Courts.
I never heard it referred to as Hamilton House but the Royal Mail had the postcode L42 4PA (before CH change) as Hillside which I always thought was the name of the old house.
I believe the GPO (Telephones) took it over sometime in the 1930's to replace an earlier exchange installed in a house on Dacre Hill opposite Woodland Road.
I noticed when the old building was demolished that the cellars were substantially reinforced with bright red painted steel girders which I suspect was for an air raid shelter for the GPO staff during WW2. For some reason they were left there and cellars filled in with rubble from the house.
Saw many changes in the time I worked there, from the old electro-mechanical exchange which required 5 full time staff to maintain it. Eventually there was just me left when it all went electronic and became unmanned when it went fully digital in 1994. My last visit there was to commission the mobile phone mast on the roof in 2001!
