Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Dialling with Letters - Harringay's Old Telephone Exchanges
I was recently looking at on old advertising handbill for a boxing event at Harringay Arena and noticed that the phone number given was STA 8221.
I'm just old enough to remember alpa-numeric dialling. Until it was abandoned in the late Sixties, alpha-numeric dialling meant that every phone number was a mix of three letters and four numbers. The letters were the first three of the name given to the local exchange. Often the names used were just area names, but sometimes they had to invent names. Where I lived for a while, for example, the exchange names were Uplands and Bywood. There was no obvious connection to anything local, but I'm sure there was poem method to the GPO's madness.
I wondered what the STA in the Arena's phone number could have stood for - not STAdium surely, I thought. So I checked and came up with a list of the local exchanges in and near Harringay until the late Sixties.
Below, is the handbill, by the way.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by maggie on
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The last part has been retained 'till the present-
1932 – Whitehall (944) 1212;
1966 – 01 230 1212;
1990 – 071 230 1212;
1995 – 0171 230 1212;
1999 – 020 7230 1212; not quite so memorable.
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Here's a link to a full London listing - found while wondering what the other handbill number (REG 2891) was. It's REGent [Street], and was a Soho exchange.
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These were the days when public telephone boxes had a black telephone sitting on top of a large black metal box. You inserted your pennies into the slot and dialled the number. If someone answered you pressed button "A" and were connected. If there was no reply or the number was engaged you pressed button "B" and your money was returned.
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Not forgetting the 'bong' sound as you fed in the pennies or got them back.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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I think the bong was for the operator in manual exchanges or for trunk calls. There was a different sound for shillings so she ( generally she ) knew how much you had put in.
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Permalink Reply by SarahC on
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I'd love it if mine was still Mulberry - but why was it it the first place? And why Dickens in Highbury? All the others have an obvious logic.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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No idea - I took my info from the page Gordon T links to above. They have a column showing derivation where they know it/ Nothing for ours though.
(Thanks for adding the link, Gordon. I'd meant to but then forgot).
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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When we moved in to our place there was a phone left by the precious occupants that still has the prefix in the middle of the dial. Forgotten it was FIT.
On Sarah's question, I imagine that when the exchanges were introduced it was fairly easy to have a logic to the pattern, so the first three letters of STAmford Hill dictated that ther exchange number was 782. As more lines were needed, new prefixes had to be created so the extra one for Stamford Hill formed the letters LAT and someone thought Latimer sounded nice!
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