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Like a Victorian internet,
This covers where the wires met.
What defunct telecomms system?
post office telegraphs (manhole cover)
Another manhole cover! The telegraph network absolutely revolutionised communication during the Victorian era, and on into the first decades of the 20th century. Messages could be sent in minutes across the country, with onward delivery by messenger to individual addresses. From the 1850s the network was primarily above ground, using open wires on telegraph poles. However in some places (town centres and where there were issues, practical or aesthetic, with overhead wires) the cables would be taken underground. Later on trunk routes were carried underground over long distances to increase capacity and improve reliability.
In fact this cover may not be over such a telegraph cable, it may be a junction or joint in a later telephone cable. The Post Office (who took over the telegraph network from private companies in 1870) re-cycled or re-used their covers extensively (and still do). This cover might have been rescued from a telegraph route elsewhere and re-used here.
Finding definitive maps of the old telegraph network is proving extremely difficult. I'm documenting the cast iron marker posts that identified the location of joints in buried telegraph cables, and plotting these posts reveals the routes. However most have now been removed, so a lot of the mapping is now down to guesswork. If you find one of these markers, PLEASE do check if it's already documented at
GPO-Markers.DerekTP.co.uk, and if not, report it via that site.
W. 20m
