For something arguably as humdrum as a telegraph pole and the society celebrating the appreciation thereof, we don’t half receive a lot of correspondence about them. Much of it pertains to general knowledge, Trivial Pursuit (TM) type questions such as “How many are there?” And “Which one is the oldest?”. The answer to question 1 can be found here and here. We’ve started to look into question 2.
Well clearly 60 years in the ground and open to all weathers doesn’t seem to do them any harm. This fresh looking thing was sent in by Disco Dave (#0526). This, he tells us, is a shallow climbable pole from one of his recent surveys. It’s a 24ft light pole from 1953. The label between the C and the 1 is an a559 label and it tells us that on this particular pole we are allowed to attach no more than 7 dropwires in any 180 degree arc so as not to overload it.
From the same correspondent…
Just started on this years batch of pole replacements and found this beauty from 1937 that needs changed out. 76 glorious years are about to come to an end for this poor fella 🙁
And then there’s telegraph pole aficionado and Lord of the Northern Poles, Kev Currie (#0530) who found this beauty, planted in 1936. I make no apologies for plugging, again, Kev’s flickr photostream. His is most definitely a connoisseur’s collection of pole pics. Kev doesn’t say where this pole is and his other locations are quite ambiguous too. Some photos he has marked as being somewhere around the Dogger Bank in the North Sea.
Anyway, is 77 years the oldest photographed pole? Watch this space.