Re: Beckfoot Lighting


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Posted by Peter Ceresole on March 01, 2012 at 01:56:43 user PeterC.

In Reply to: Beckfoot Lighting posted by Peter Hyland on March 01, 2012 at 00:50:27:

When Dick rigged up the pigeon bell in PP he used batteries to energise it rather than a transformer. So we are left with oil lamps and candles.

I think it has to be oil lamps. As to the pigeon bell, if there was an electricity supply to Beckfoot, at that time it would probably have been DC; I remember my parents' house in West London, and that certainly had DC, which caused no end of messing about when in 1945 we moved closer into town, and the supply was AC. It meant that to power their DC radiogram they had to install a motor generator which fired up when they switched on the radio. Problem with DC was that you couldn't have a transformer, it had to be a motor generator. Or, of course, a resistance voltage dropper, but that would be a nightmare. So it had to be batteries.

As for the lighting, oil lamps and candles would have been quite normal. Remember, when signalling from Holly Howe, 'flashing' could easily have meant moving an oil lamp in and out of sight; it would have been jolly dark in winter, and there would have been no distracting lights elsewhere, certainly no street lights. There might have been gas street lights in Bowness, but that was a long way away. So any light at all would have been far more visible than it would be today. And Mrs Blackett could easily have been carrying an oil lamp when she came up through the woods.

As for the gas lighting, I remember at the end of WW2 when we'd had several years of no street lighting at all; the blackout ended, and in the street round the side of our house (the corner of Percival Road and Well Lane, in London- it's all on Street View) there was a nice pile called 'Mullion Cottage' and to the right of the entrance gate in Well Lane there was a gas street light with a pilot flame, which was switched on by a man on a bicycle with a long pole to reach the tap at the top. There's still an electric street light in exactly the same position, although there's an added garage for a car, which previously was just a wiggle in the wall. I remember that after the war, that seemed wonderfully bright. Now, it would be an absolute glow worm.


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