Former local dialling codes for Staffordshire/Stoke.

[julie_m]

Lichfield was a local call from Burton on Trent (and therefore so was Etwall, a satellite exchange of Burton, to Cannock - a Lichfield satellite, some 30 miles away!) However, there may not have been a local code. I don't remember the code for Lichfield ever being anything but 0543. That would be from about 1979 onwards. I remember this because we had family in Cannock, and the code there was the same from anywhere we went.

Not sure about Tamworth or Uttoxeter; I don't remember them being anything besides 0827 and 0889, but I don't remember as far back because I only started paying attention to other dialling codes later on.

[Wardour]

Greetings from a long-time lurker.

Reading this thread prompts me to ask something I have wondered about in the past. I grew up in Stoke, and we had five-figure phone numbers in both of the houses we lived in between 1976 and 1995. They both began with a 4, as Paul Sherwin mentions above. All of the 5-figure numbers became 6-figure numbers in 1995 by the addition of a leading 8 (so our number went from being 48XXX to 848XXX.)

A relative of ours, however, always had a 6-figure number for as long as I can remember, beginning with a 4. When the mass conversion to 6-figure numbers happened in 1995, her number stayed the same, and is still the same now.

I wondered about this for a long time, as she was the only person in the area we knew with a 6-figure number. She lived less than a mile up the road from us, and I always thought she was on the same exchange. Most Newcastle and Chesterton numbers were 6-digit, but they began with a 6 or 5 respectively. Sheila's was the only 6-digit number we knew of at the time beginning with a 4.

Was it simply a matter of demand on a particular exchange which determined how many digits made up their number, or is there a more technical explanation?

(Thinks: 1995 was a funny old year for phone numbers in Stoke. Not only did they convert all of the 5-figure numbers to 6-figures, but it was also the year the code changed from 0782 to 01782. The fact that these changes happened at different times of the year filled quite a few column inches in the Evening Sentinel.)

[Dave Moll]

Although by 1996 (the date of my Phone Book Companion) "01782 4" is given as a single entry for Stoke-on-Trent/Fenton, it may have been previously split down further according to the digit after the "4". As an example of this still extant in 1996, "01782 3" numbers are/were split down as follows:

01782 30 Ash Bank, Stoke-on-Trent
01782 31
to
01782 34 Longton/Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent
01782 35 ICS, Stoke-on-Trent
01782 37 Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent
01782 38 Blythe Bridge, Stoke-on-Trent
01782 39 Blythe Bridge, Stoke-on-Trent

[Wardour]

Thanks, Dave. Interesting that the 1996 Phone Book Companion says that Stoke and Fenton are 01782 4. The mass conversion of the former 5-digit numbers (0782 4XXXX) to 6-digit (0782 84XXXX) was definitely in the summer of 1995. I remember it clearly as I was in the early weeks of courtship of the woman who was to become my wife. The addition of the extra 1 to the code happened later in the year, and I think it was rolled out nationwide.

One further thought occurs: our first 5-digit number was originally a party line, while my Aunt assures me in her rather superior way that her 6-figure number was a private line from the start. Could this have had anything to do with it?

[Pellseinydd]

The 'codes' listed in the 'Phone Book Companion' include the first digits of the telephone number to indicate which exchange they are on - after all it is a 'decoder' to give that information. Once the exchanges such as Ashbank became 6 digit numbers they were moved into the 0782 'Linked Numbering Scheme' with no codes needed between the exchanges. So the 01782 3X are not the codes but to indicate which the exchanges the numbers were on.

Re- the 5 digit 'party-line' and 6 digit 'exclusive' line - I doubt that made any difference at all.