Paul's right. I lived at a terraced house with Round Pin 5 or 15 amp sockets [unfused] on the individual radial cables until we moved to a "new build" semi detached estate house [The Dare to Build Company] near Blackford Bridge in Bury [1958]. It had futuristic "ring main" circuits with the [now] familiar fused plugs. Despite this we spent the first night with Kerosene Lamps and a Camping Stove. The electrician came round next day and used his Megger to trace a large nail that had been hammered through one leg of the ground floor ring. He demonstrated what he was doing as I was so interested. The Fuse Box was replaced because one section had burn't out and he gave it to me. I was delighted!
Despite the flexibility of the system we weren't exactly overburdened with 13 amp sockets. I was never sure if that was a pure money saving exercise or uncertainty about how many would actually be required in practise? There were only two singles in the rear living room and my dad had someone in to replace one of these with a surface mount double quite quickly. The front [best] room had a 3kw wall mounted electric fire but NO sockets at all
Quite inconvenient really. NO sockets in the boxroom either! As I got older a friend of my Dad's supervised some additions to the ring when I convinced my parents that I could "tap in" to the electric fire feed and also install four doubles in the tiny box room by extending the ring from the bedroom next door [there's!] I was using it as a radio shack by then, powered from a light socket adaptor [1930's style]. Power to the bench went via the redundant Fuse Box [burnt section removed] and low level fuses. The family were instructed that turning off power there would quickly isolate isolate any equipment I was working on if I was in difficulty
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My Mentor didn't give dates about the ring system when he explained it to me but he did say that it had been exclusive to Industry before and during the War and it was still a very new aspect of house building then. During the sixties I was in a lot houses trying to set up guitar systems with friends etc and even doing some jobs with my electrician father-in-law. The was no major rush into the modern system as I recall and a lot of people were ignorant or suspicious in relation to 13 amp plugs and wiring for a long time. There's always a certain amount of artistic license in drama and the electrical side is usually where this occurs. Foyles War is pretty good at creating the right period atmosphere [I think] so the odd discrepancy can be forgiven perhaps?
Dave W