These much ignored pieces of rural and urban furniture finally have a website of their own.

telegraph pole appreciation society logoThis is not the site to visit for technical information pertaining to telegraph poles. You'll find nothing about 10KVa transformers, digital telephone networking or even so much as a single volt. This is a website celebrating the glorious everyday mundanitude of these simple silent sentinels the world over. We don't care what the wires contain either. They all carry electricity in some way be it the sparky stuff which boils your kettle, or the thinner stuff with your voice in it when you're on the phone.


POTM & The Christmas Rush

Apologies if you’ve been waiting on an order from us. They are all now in the post but there was this tiddly little pole we wanted to take a look at you see. Only it was in Ireland. This required a four hour drive up to Holyhead, an overnight, then the 9am ferry to Dublin, then another six hour drive back up to the top left hand corner to find it. We didn’t tell anyone we were going as we tend to leave the key under the mat and last time, Auntie Brenda came in a tidied the place up. Now we can’t find a thing.

This must qualify as the cutest pole in, well, anywhere really. It’s short single arm with its solitary clipped off insulator serves to highlight the road-to-nowhere feel about the place. It’s the sort of pole you might find in a Flann O’Brien novel*1. The sky being the lighter of the two shades that this part of the world normally provides. This is just off the R238 at Leckemy on the back road to Moville near the quarry. I’m going to call it my Pole of the Month.

Another pole of interest is one that I once sailed past on Lough Swilly, just above Fahan (pronounced Farn) marina. Talk about past glories – this pole is no longer connected to anything, not even the house beyond the hedge. But it does shout to me “contender for calendar 2025”. One more photo is a fine run of power poles intersected by a rainbow near Inch island which happened to be on somebody’s special birthday and it kept on bloody raining!

And finally, the reason for the Christmas rush might also be my last chance to plug our wonderful 2024 Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society calendars. Here is mighty June. Can’t wait. Get yours <here>.

*1 The Third Policeman. Possibly the finest novel written. Ever.

The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society 2024 calendar, showing June, with a very complex looking pole head arrangement.

More from the Cuckoo Line

Albert Einstein’s Special relativity indicates that a correspondent may experience relativistic time dilation when expecting the email and photographs they sent to be published within the same inertial frame of reference from the recipient’s standpoint. Or something.

This is the only way to explain the near three years that have elapsed since Matt Brown’s email(s) and photographs were transmitted to the TPAS HQ inbox. And, hand on heart, I’m not sure I even understood that first paragraph.

Matt and his family are regulars exploring ye Olde Cuckoo Line (click to see previous article on subject). Matt is also a car restorer and is rebuilding a GPO Morris van. Now, the photographs you see below are from a series of emails and so I will summarise them here. Most are serendipitous finds along said disused railway line and nearby woods down there in East Sussex. They are hunting for telegraphic artefacts for the making of their very own pre-1960’s garden pole. The yellow truck you see is a forest find GPO truck as once used by TV detectors et al. Other gems in these pics: An undated pole with a star shaped cut out where the date might be, A GPO crown transfer (presumably for the van restoration), a selection of spooky tunnels, culverts and iron railings and a couple of restored Morris van panels.

Not the best photographs in the world., arguably. And camera not in the steadiest hand in the world. With Dutch angles particularly on the tunnel shots. And arguably, not the highest resolution camera in the world. But we enthusiasts can find interest in pretty much anything. Thank you Matt. I imagine you must have finished that van by now.

Poles of the Oban Oblast

Fresh back from a lengthy return trip for some R&R near Oban, Argyll. Interesting overnight on the way up at the delightfully eccentric Ecclefechan Hotel but did the return journey back to west Wales in one pergatorial go – just stayed in bed the next day to recover. Anyway, herewith a selection of the tall, wooden, sticky-uppy things with wires coming out of the top that I spotted within a small radius of our home for the week – Gallanach Castle (see last pic). Poles here also from nearby isles of Kerrera and Lismore. The two penultimate pictures showing how we subsisted despite having a castle kitchen at our disposal.

Telegraph Poles & Fine Art

…mix surprisingly well. Anybody who has ever read our wonderful book Telegraph Pole Appreciation for Beginners (Key Stages 1-4) will have seen just how much telegraph poles feature as a muse for artists the world over.

Debbie Richards is a real artist from Ipswich, she assures us; done the whole fine art degree thing and is a member of Ipswich Art Society. “I painted a Telegraph pole at the top of my street in Ipswich because it looked somehow amazing, especially with the cloud behind it, photos attached. I wondered if you could put it on your for sale page?

We don’t have a “for sale” page, sorry Debbie, but I will plug it here in the vain hope that some generous benefactor will buy it off you and give it to me. Debbie hopes I like it. I love it. It would hang so well here in our oak-panelled boardroom at TPAS Towers. (alongside my Joe Simpson piece). Alas, I have fewer than two halfpennys to rub together otherwise I’d snap it up immediately.

It’s 80cm x 80cm, oil on stretched canvas, framed in wood. £450 plus p&p. Do contact this office for further details.

An oil painting of a DP in an Ipswich street
A painting of a DP telegraph pole on an easel in an artist's studio

A Nude Linesman in Oz

 I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to get this post up on to the website. Jerry Deacon, who sent this to me, can’t believe how long it’s taken either. And Jerry, I’ve just realised is none other than (previously plugged on here) Kilgraney Sleepers (now railwaysleepers.com) – the place to go for old railway sleepers (the clue is in the name) but also old and new telegraph poles for ornamental and nerdic use. Nice plug for you there Jerry; I trust that this is adequate recompense for my tardiness.

Anyway, back in March. Jerry wrote to tell us that as an intrepid explorer he came across Hamelin Pool Telegraph Station (1884) near Shark Bay in Western Australia. There is a definite passion for telegraph poles in Oz. In October 1872 the Overland Telegraph line between Darwin and Adelaide was completed, and the Australian telegraph network became linked directly to Europe (termite attacks notwithstanding). Hamelin station was established as a repeater station that linked Western Australia into this same network. And this is the last of these stations still extant. Now, for some reason, it features, quite prominently, a nude linesman attending to the pole top apparatus. Why this should be is anyone’s guess and Jerry offers no explanation, nor does anything at the station itself. Though he did suggest Nude Pole of the Month as a possible new feature for these very pages. I’m going to pretend he never said that.

Moochin’ about in Mullingar

Messing about in Ireland again! Well I only live a modest distance from the ferry at Fishguard, so it’d be churlish not to. A splendid overnight in James Joyce’s former watering hole, the very fine Greville Arms Hotel, in the midlands town of Mullingar in Co. Westmeath. Mullingar won’t ever win any tidy town awards but it had an old Irish charm all of its own. And the railway station had a further delight for us in the overlooked, disused and too-close-to-everything-to-chop-down ancient telegraph pole you see below. And a station on a bend is worth two in the bush or something.

People who like telegraph poles often like old railways too and vice-versa. I’m no different. So next day we found ourselves at Castletown (5 miles SE) walking ye olde rail trail that once ran between Mullingar and Athlone (you remember Athlone don’t you?) Our meeting, along said trail, with an elderly Irish gentleman whose wonderful accent and false teeth that rattled as he talked is a story for another time, perhaps over a pint of something black and nourishing. Anyway, this trail still has lengths of track in places and is a haven for wildlife. In fact, Ireland is fully fifty years behind our UK depletion of nature. I hope they learn from our mistakes. The final photo in the sequence is a delightful croc-face replete with insulators and insulating coat of ivy. This was on the way home in Co. WIcklow. Without further ado.

Poetic poles in Northumberland

Simon Rushton is a pole aficionado after my own heart. He clearly gets the poetry of their silent sentinel lives watching over us as we scud about our business beneath. Here are a selection of Simon’s photos from overlooked poles in Northumberland. Simon’s own beautiful words are best to describe them:

“Ancient beauty shivering on the edge of woodland in the winter snow at Howick, Northumberland. She’s a toothless wonder, poor thing, with just a couple of insulators left in place, but no doubt amazed to have a new lease of life carrying fibre. There she stands, blinking in the fading light, relieved not to be recycled as gate posts in the local fields quite yet.”

And there’s more: “Mystery survivors on the road from Hexham to Alston, Northumberland. The wires are ominously down in places but the remainder are soldiering on regardless. Here and there are fresh faces, newly creosoted – the matchstick brigade, lacking those gorgeous double and triple cross-members with insulators…”

Ardnamurchan Allure

It’s been quite a while since we last heard from Lord of the Northern Poles, aka Kev Currie (#0530). Turns out he’s been busy misanthroping in Ardnamurchan – 50 square miles of remote and empty (of humans) peninsula in the western Highlands of Scotland. It’s a grand place for it, for sure, but we’ve missed Kev’s excellent and bewitching pole photos. Amends have been made with these two however. Kev says that his passion for poles has not waned and if anything has deepened as his wife (Lady of the Northern Poles) has been trying, unsuccessfully, to get him to counselling. Don’t bother Lady OTNP.

“The Ardnamurchen peninsula was absolutely amazing” Kev said “not just for the abundance of old telegraph poles but the amount of otters eagles and seals we saw and for being almost devoid of other humans.” It’s long been on my must-visit list and I have sailed past it on the ferry to Tiree and Barra.

Pic #1 is of some fine reindeer food on an unmarked pole. Shows how clean the air is up there, that it’s growing on a creosoted pole notwithstanding. And the second pic is a 2½ armed pole also with no date.

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