W e get some odd requests here at Telegraph Pole Towers.  Mainly to stop playing the drums in the middle of the night. And if we don't stop our bloody dog barking something really bad is going to happen to it. But also occasionally proper requesty stuff about telegraph poles.  Such as this one from Ian Hopkins of the Kempley Tardis Project.

We would like to input more info on our website and would love the history of the telegraph pole adjacent to our telephone box on Kempley green (Phone box at Kempley Green:: OS grid SO6729)

Please can you help?

Being unfamiliar with said telegraph pole, or Kempley or even Gloucestershire, I asked Ian for a photo or two which may aid our telegraphic forensic department in dating the pole.  He never furnished me with a top to toe photo, but we do have a close-up of the markings at the 8ft mark and some of the head of the pole itself. 

I'm also nothing if I'm not thorough. So I drove down to Kempley in the middle of the night and cut down the pole for the cross-section photo you see lower right.  This should further aid the aging - about 20yrs old when it got turned into a pole, according to me.

Alas, the numbers top left only tell us that it's a Distribution Pole and and is number 37 in the sequence.  The hole punched green ticket above it might have told us when it was last inspected, but those numbers have faded to nothing.  There looks to be a couple of grey ceramic/bakelite screw-top insulators, but all long since superceded by modern BT plastic boxes.

Not being a telephone engineer, or any kind of engineer, or indeed any kind of anything, I will throw this question to the many former GPO engineers who frequent this site (HTA, TPAS Keith S**** among them) who will likely (definitely) know more than me.

OTY chaps.  What can you tell us about the telegraph pole of Kempley Green?