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Old 28th Jul 2018, 1:19 pm   #1
Pellseinydd
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Default 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

Has anyone heard of an exchange by the name of 'Culpeper' said to have been a relief exchange for East Peckham in Kent around 1971/72?

I've found it shown in a non official list of exchanges with their dialling codes put together by telephone enthusiasts - said to have been reached by dialling 881 from Maidstone (0622) - 88 was the code for East Peckham at the time. Either the local or national code for Culpeper doesn't appear in any of the dozens of STD codebooks I've got from the early 1970's.

Neither can I find any evidence of it in the GPO's annual 'List of Exchanges' as at the 31st of March each year for 1970/71 or /72. Neither is it in an extract of the service dates of all the exchanges in the UK extracted from the official Post Office Circulars/Gazettes for that era.

Plus there aren't any 'Culpeper' numbers that appear in the 1971 Canterbury Telephone Directory. Plenty of numbers for other relief/mobile exchanges in the Canterbury telephone area.

At that time East Peckham was a Strowger UAX13 exchange with 655 lines on it at the end of March 1967 with three digit numbers. However the April 1972 directory shows East Peckham with six digit numbers beginning with 871xxx as a new electronic exchange came into service and by end of March 1973 there were 707 and lines on it - hardly any increase if the new East Peckham had included lines from Culpeper 'relief' exchange - which was very unlikely to have been provided for so few lines.

Anyone heard of a 'Culpeper' exchange in the early 1970's? Was it a 'directory' name for an exchange or an internal PO service name for an exchange?

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Old 28th Jul 2018, 1:37 pm   #2
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

Thomas Colpeper was a character in the 1944 Powell / Pressburger film " A Canterbury Tale".

Just a thought...
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Old 28th Jul 2018, 1:37 pm   #3
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

The Culpepers are extinct noblemen from Kent.

Sounds like this could have been a contrived name for a mobile exchange brought in to increase capacity. Giving it a new name would have been easier than integrating it with the numbering scheme of an existing exchange.

There were dozens of such exchanges in Bedford Telephone Area in the 1970's all named after birds. Merlin, Peregine and Puffin spring to mind. The inspiration for the names probably came from Leighton Buzzard.
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Old 28th Jul 2018, 1:54 pm   #4
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

Thanks Barry "A Canterbury Tale" was the P+P film I'd referenced but couldn't recall, in the recent "R4 VHS Revival" thread as influencing 2001 A Space Odyssey! Graham isn't Culpeper featured in a film-a Western?

Dave


I've found The Culpepper Cattle Company [1972 two p's] Might this fit with the contrived exchange ID theory?
I don't think it's exactly what I had in mind but Culpeper is certainly a distinctive name!!

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Old 28th Jul 2018, 3:30 pm   #5
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

How about Nichols Culpeper - certainly haled from London area :-


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Culpeper
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Old 28th Jul 2018, 4:10 pm   #6
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

Could it have been a military / civil defence exchange?
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Old 28th Jul 2018, 4:28 pm   #7
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

Quote:
Originally Posted by dave walsh View Post
Thanks Barry "A Canterbury Tale" was the P+P film I'd referenced but couldn't recall, in the recent "R4 VHS Revival" thread as influencing 2001 A Space Odyssey! Graham isn't Culpeper featured in a film-a Western?
The connection between the bird into Spitfire scene and the bone / monolith in 2001 is possibly that Charles Staffel who worked on A Canterbury Tale at Denham Studios later was one of Kubricks special effects advisors on 2001.
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Old 28th Jul 2018, 4:37 pm   #8
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

Quote:
Originally Posted by paulsherwin View Post
Could it have been a military / civil defence exchange?
Unlikely. The list that it is from is of public exchanges. Around that period I was a GPO engineer looking after a major hub of the MoD network and we had nothing like that - we had virtually no automatic exchanges in the network - it was all manual switching.
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Old 11th Aug 2018, 5:57 pm   #9
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

I've been away a while but now that I'm back, I can fill in some of the answers (but not all of them!). I can also 'clarify' some of Ian's statements.

CULPEPER, also spelled CULPEPPER, first came up in April 2017, when I raised this mystery exchange on the STROWGER e-list. Roger Harris, a normally very reliable informant replied:
“I have some notes of Culpeper being a mobile ND whose subscribers eventually went to East Peckham. East Peckham went to a 6-digit TXE2 in around 1973 so I guess that would give an approximate date.”

Armed with that information I discovered , thanks to Google, that Richard Culpeper (a sheriff of Kent) lived at East Peckham in the 15th century, so there’s the connection. Someone in the planning office must have had a keen interest in local history.

However, that's not the end of it, as it appears that CULPEPER was planned but never actually implemented, in the same as the nearby STOURVALE (Ashford area) did not become reality. The code was most definitely 881, as the January 1970 VIF for south-east London gives CULPEPPER (with the extra P) as Faraday 98.881 and assistance as Kingsway 524.01. F98 is Maidstone, whilst K524 is Chatham.

However, East Peckham was not Maidstone 88 but Maidstone 888 (F 98.888 or K 24.888). In other words, you reached (or would have reached) Culpeper direct from Maidstone, not via level 1 off East Peckham. 881 was later used for subscribers to reach Prestel.

The fact that Culpeper did not appear in STD dialling code books is not surprising, for as Paul Ebling says, "The expedient ways that relief exchanges were connected into the network meant that low traffic was OK, but the rise in traffic brought by STD would create pain. Also, the number of digits could be a problem – hanging an MNDX on a level of the exhausted exchange ( by moving 100 subs or 10 junction routes to the MNDX ) would generally finish up with one more digit than some distant GSCs could pulse out… I do not recall a definite policy, but it would make sense!"

The fact that Culpeper does not appear in David Kay's monster list of exchange opening and closing dates (which is compiled largely from P.O. Gazette entries) would tend to confirm that Culpeper never came to fruition, as does the fact that the (now retired) Canterbury Area exchange planner does not recall the name either. He did, however, confirm to me that: "The people (or maybe just one person) who named relief exchanges in Canterbury TA were rather classically-minded:
Saxon Marsh (Minster Thanet)
Coldrum Stones (Fairseat - only moved into TW Area w.e.f. 1.2.1969)
Pilgrims Way (Harrietsham) & Downs Cross (Lenham)
Yeoman's Grange (Staplehurst - also moved into TW Area 1.2.1969)
...but of course the names had to satisfy civil service/PO rules, e.g. you couldn't have "Persil" or "Leyton Orient". Thus the selections were pretty boring, and historical topics were considered safe."

Without prompting from me but thanks to his powers of recall after 47 years, he added:
"I suspect from checking free levels that Culpeper was on Maidstone 881. This later became the Prestel access level, a curious co-incidence as the same happened to Ashford 87, ex-Stourvale. Of course, there weren't that many spare levels to choose from, so not too surprising."

What a tangled web we weave!

Andy.
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Old 11th Aug 2018, 11:44 pm   #10
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

Franksbridge a UAX13 relief exchange from early 1970 (appear in Annual List of Exchanges as at end of March 1970) until Headcorn was converted to a TXE2 Satellite off Maidstone on 1th March 1976. The number of lines on Headcorn then has 890 lines - marginally over the total for the old Headcorn Strowger plus Franksbridge UAX13.

The code for Franksbridge in the early years of its existence is shown in STD code books I have as 0627 831 which translates to 8831 off Maidstone - as 883 was Headcorn (0627 83) so it was actually level 1 off Headcorn UAX13 !!

However that only lasted for a couple of years when it is shown in STD codebooks up to 1975 as 0627 81 i.e 881 off Maidstone. So Culpepper couldn't have been 881 !

Canterbury area showed the STD code for very few of its 'relief' exchanges (not all were mobiles) whereas most other telephone areas did.

Richard Culpepper (Sheriff of Kent in 1470) lived at Oxon Hoath to the west of West Peckham, some miles to the north west of East Peckham. Wikipedia doesn't show any Culpeppers in East Peckham

Ian
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Old 12th Aug 2018, 8:09 am   #11
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

I've now heard back from some retired Exchange construction engineers of the area/ era, and none of them recalled it.
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Old 17th Aug 2018, 7:25 pm   #12
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

There were some mobile TXE2 exchanges brought in to give temporary service in small rural locations while the existing Strowger gear was removed and a "new" System x or AXE10 installed, where the size of the site meant that the old and replacement exchange would not fit at the same time.

I use the word mobile in a loose sense. They were on wheels, but usually travelled by lorry, as I think they were not suitable for towing.

There is still one of these in the yard at Chippenham TE.
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Old 18th Aug 2018, 8:44 am   #13
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

Silly question from someone who knows little about telephone gear:
Regarding these temporary exchanges, did each subscriber line have to be disconnected from the old exchange individually and connected to the temporary one, then the procedure repeated once the new exchange was comissioned, or is there some sort of huge multi-pole connector for the lot?
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Old 18th Aug 2018, 9:07 am   #14
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Default Re: 'Culpeper' exchange near Maidstone - early 1970's

This is going off topic. If you want to discuss exchange changeovers please start a new thread.
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