Shropshire Magazine

Wellington Telephone Exchange was a real hive of activity in the 1950s and early ’60s.

Neil Thomas finds the number’s up when he dials in to some smooth operators

They were from an era when the world seemed to be in black and white, a throwback to a gentler age of iconic red call boxes and easy-to-remember phone numbers.

The former switchboard operators – the ‘Hello Girls’ – of the old Wellington Telephone Exchange recalled those times at a heart-warming reunion at Hadley Park Hotel.

There was a great deal of catching up to do. After all, the manned exchange closed for the final time nearly 45 years ago to accommodate a switch to full automation.

When the doors closed on November 5, 1963, the charismatic John F Kennedy was still President of the United States, while Harold Macmillan had resigned the previous month as Prime Minister after a summer of turmoil including the Profumo Affair.

Gerry and the Pacemakers topped the UK Pop charts with You’ll Never Walk Alone, while cinema-goers were flocking to see Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the epic Cleopatra.

For the Wellington Hello Girls, there were tearful farewells at a parting of the ways, though not a lasting one. Several reunions have seen to that.

Maureen Perks (top) and Joan Maddison at the Hello Girls reunion.

The latest get-together, 16 years after the last one, was organised by Joan Maddison and Maureen Perks. They recalled the days in the 1950s and ’60s, when rock’n’roll was still young, a new semi would cost you £3,000 and a brand new family saloon a few hundred quid.

“It was a great time. It might be hard to imagine looking at us now but we were all dolly birds,” says 76 year-old Joan with a mischievous twinkle.

She joined in 1950 and stayed for seven years, recalling the banter of the exchange’s heyday both with colleagues and over the air with callers following the girls’ initial polite inquiry of “number, please?”

“It was a happy, friendly place. I think one of the most notable things about being a Hello Girl was that you formed lifelong friendships,” says Joan, who still lives in Wellington.

Fellow Wellington resident Maureen, the ‘baby’ of the group at 65, went to work at the exchange at the very start of the swinging ’60s, when she was just 17.

“It was a very happy time,” she says. “I was very proud to be a Hello Girl. All the girls were really good looking, we were always very well turned out and it was quite something to get a job at the exchange.

“We were always doing things together out of work, as well as at the exchange. Some of the girls took part in a fashion show one year, and another year I joined others on a float in the parade at Wellington Carnival.

“It’s funny but some memories stick out more than others, like the chocolate cakes and big jugs of coffee we used to get as a treat on Saturday afternoons from Sidoli’s in New Street.”

Four of the telephone engineers were at the reunion, providing a minority male presence among the 40 or so guests.

Fun

Robert Donaldson recalled: “We had great fun. It was a terrific place to work and it’s great to see so many people again.”

Most of those at the event still live in Shropshire but the lure of the old days brought one over from Spain. Rosemary Fletcher, who is now 79, travelled from Valencia, where she went to live with her daughter five years ago.

“I do miss England so any excuse to come over . . .” says Rosemary, who was at the exchange in the 1940s.

The England that Rosemary misses has, of course, changed in so many ways since her days at the exchange. The communications industry has become big business, with a raft of global providers vying for a share of the market.

In the days of the Hello Girls, an Orange was what you ate and Mercury was a liquid that rose in your kitchen thermometer when the chip pan caught fire. There were no TalkTalks, Tiscalis or Virgins. There wasn’t even a BT, which is the largest landline provider in the UK today.

The nation’s postal and telephone services all came under the umbrella of the GPO (General Post Office), which meant that the telephone exchange in Wellington was housed alongside the post office and mail sorting depot in one huge complex in Walker Street.

“We were such a happy bunch. Everyone got along so well, from we girls to the engineers and the postmen,” says Maureen.

Mind-whirling leaps in technological advancement, by which you can download the internet on your mobile phone, call home from the top of the Andes, text, and leave voice messages, inevitably imbue the memories of the Hello Girls with a sepia-washed innocence.

I’ll bet there are plenty of people out there who have trouble remembering their own 11-digit mobile numbers, never mind those of family and friends. So there is a vague sensation of envy when the girls reel off phone numbers from nearly 50 years ago.

“I remember that Sankey’s was Wellington 500 and Churm’s was 349,” says Joan.

“BRS was 882,” adds Maureen, and I sense that they are about to plunge headlong into a marathon memory contest, which I’m simply not old enough to judge. So who had the honour of being Wellington 1, I inquire, imagining it to be some grand stately home or important local government office.

“Actually it was a phone box right outside the Post Office in Walker Street,” says Maureen without a moment’s hesitation.

“The other phone box there was Wellington 50,” adds Joan.

These were the days of Bakelite phones, of button A and button B, and of letters of the alphabet next to numbers on the dial.

Sue May and Freda Asterly work the exchange.

If you wished to phone a friend from a call box you would put in your coin and dial the exchange where a light would flash and one of the girls would answer. You would give her the number and she would try to connect you. If successful, you’d press Button A to talk. If there was no reply you’d press Button B to get your coin back. The alphabet on the dial was used in the days before a widespread STD code when a connection to, say, Much Wenlock 33 would be MWK33.

The exchange operated around the clock with about 50 girls working in eight-hour shifts.

Exciting

“Sometimes, it could be really hectic with all the lights flashing non-stop and people talking at once and it was an exciting place to be,” recalls Maureen.

The girls also took emergency calls – red lights and buzzers came on and they took priority – and so became skilled at dealing sympathetically but efficiently with people who were often distressed or panicking.

They were also in positions of great trust since they had to monitor every phone call, largely to time the length of them so that they could advise when more money needed to be put in.

Inevitably, they were privy to a few spicy conversations which, even now, with true professionalism none of them will divulge. And, equally inevitably, they were chatted up by young male callers. There was occasionally the odd light-hearted proposal of marriage.

One chat up even led to the altar – in a roundabout way. In 1940 one of the girls agreed to go out on a blind date with a young airman from High Ercall, arranging to meet him outside the old Clifton cinema in Wellington. Something cropped up and she couldn’t go, so offered the date to her friend at the exchange. She agreed, the couple hit it off, were married five months later and together for 50 years. Frederick May died 18 years ago but his widow Sue is still around to tell the story.