Yes, at last we get to talk about telegraph pole finials.  This prompted by John Woodall (#425H) who sent us the photograph (right) of his mystery object, described as 11" x 8" which appears to form part of his garden furniture.  The brass door-knob on the top is a later addition.

It was the Victorians who first started to decorate their telegraph poles with finials.  This, presumably, to pretty up this ugly [sic] industrial architecture which was springing up across their countryside.  But this is likely to be one as fitted by the GPO, in the 1930s.  If, like me, you have your head forever skywards, you will spot more of them.  The one at left, one of a run of them near More Church, Shropshire.

Later GPO finials were made of metal.  And amazingly you can pick one up on eBay for a song.  The selection below all sold at recent auctions - they ranged in price from 99p for the wooden one to £9.06.  Clearly nobody understands the value of these things.  Maybe it's time I cornered the market?

W ell, almost. John Woodall (#0425H) sent us a few items of interest recently.

Firstly, some photos of a retaining wall in his garden at Inverness made from retired telegraph poles.  He says the poles came from Pocklington in East Yorkshire, and were used for a Pole Barn in Regent Street before they ended up in his wall 391 miles further north.  The barn housed electrical firms' vans apparently. 

Now, we're always interested in absolutely anything telegraph pole related here, but John sent us these because he thought we'd be particularly interested in the markings thereon.  We've zoomed and scanned and photo-enhanced these as best we can and the results are hereabout. Do please click on each photo for the fuller-sized version.

Due to the inadequacies of photographing something so fine as telegraph pole hieroglyphics, John kindly sketched the markings off this first one.

Lost in the creosote and dare I say, weeds, is another GPO stamp.  This one would seem to read GPO 1931.

W ere they a Civil Servant or Lollipop lady, then these poles would certainly have received a CBE or similar award by now. A long and useful working life propping up telephone wires in E. Yorkshire. Semi-retirement supporting the roof of a shed in the same town. And today still grafting at holding back soil as part of a wall up there in Inverness.  Somebody should write to the Queen.

Not finished there though.  John was busy dismantling an old government issue George VI table (as you do) and tucked at the back of a drawer he found a GPO work-docket for erecting a pole and wires in Tomnahurich Street, Inverness dated 1948.

I wonder if the job ever got done. Or did it, like so many work requests which land on my own desk, slip to the back of the drawer where they lie, forever undone.

T his has to be the mother of all poles. Now, I am loathe to prefix it with the word "telegraph" for fear of upsetting the more conservative of our members. But it's a wooden pole and it's got wires coming off it so I'm interested (please see Disclaimer).

This was spotted on a quiet back lane a mile or so from the somnolescent Donegal town of Moville.

I spent a good ten minutes underneath it, gazing up at its science-fiction countenance with wonder.

Do the Irish cleverly place their transformer substations so high to be out of reach of rural copper thieves perhaps?

It's even got a pair of central-heating radiators on it. And a clock, as well as all that space-age gubbins on top. So could it be a misplaced W.I. tea urn, or a bizarre inverse airing cupboard, or an outside heating system - a global warming device perhaps?

But when I spotted the drain tap at the bottom I realised that this was the work of an Irish power engineer moonlighting as a real-ale micro-brewer.

To think that a pint of Donegal's equivalent of 'Big Nevs' was probably just a stepladder away.

We had a letter this week from Shaun Hull from sky.com.

Hi there,

I was wandering [sic] if anyone knows the approximate number of telegraph poles, still in use today, in the U.K.?

Thanks,
Shaun Hull.

The answer to your question Shaun, is yes!  His name is Clive, he is a retired metalworker, and we believe he lives in the Halesowen area of the West Midlands.  However we wondered why you might want to know about him.  Rather than find out who exactly knows the answer to this most vexing of questions, why not let's have a go at working it out for ourselves.  That way we don't have to trouble poor Clive at all.

And where else to seek truth but that great fount of all metaphysical wisdom in the modern world. That's right; Yahoo Answers.  Those people are so clever.  And this has to be correct because it was the top answer as chosen by 40% (2) of the people who read it. And the answer is a rather surprising : 1,265,810.