Abridged from Cuckfield to Haywards Heath, a tale of two exchanges.
By Steve Turner
In 2025, the landline is fading quickly into the history books, many people now relying on their mobile phone and any hardwired line to properties now tending to be for broadband connection only from a multitude of service providers.
So, let’s go back to the first days of the telephone in Haywards Heath and explore the history of communication in the town when the only service provider was the General Post Office (GPO).
The exchange in Boltro Road opened on Wednesday November 12th, 1902, at the back of the Post Office as a little ‘CBS1’ simply meaning Central Battery System and would be operated by someone known simply as ‘The Operator’ a phrase still in use today.
Initially, it was a position open to men and women however, at the time, women were considered to have softer voices, a better temperament, and more patience so they did the daytime shifts; men however did the night shifts once 24 hours working was introduced.
In those days, telephones didn’t have dials; the exchange was manual, not automatic – to make a call, you lifted the handset and waited. By this action, an electrical connection had been made, and a lamp would glow on the switchboard in association with a jack (or socket) labelled with the subscriber, or customer number – alerted, the Operator would plug in and say the age-old phrase ‘Number Please’.
Using the array of plugs, cords, and jacks in front of her, she would plug into the requested number and ring the number. At the end of the call, handsets replaced, the lamps would go out, and the Operator removed the cords. On a single position switchboard about 20 calls could be in progress at one time.
Call details and charges were recorded on dockets and collected throughout the day by the supervisor to be collated for billing purposes. At that time, a trunk call to London was three minutes for 3d and local calls were charged at 1d for an unlimited duration. The annual line rental was £4.
Initially, the exchange would have had very few ‘subs’ as the exchange was in it’s infancy, the required number of Subs for the GPO to open an exchange was ten. In January 1902, 17 people had registered an interest, so it was viable immediately. The cost of setting up the exchange would have been in the region of £500 with all the connections being overhead.
There were poles everywhere, some of them taller than houses, it wasn’t unusual for neighbouring streets to be fed from one pole, over the roofs of other houses with little right of appeal! Eventually with the increase in connections, underground lead cable with copper conductors and paper insulation was introduced, slowly removing the need for so much of the overhead network.
Making a call wasn’t as instantaneous as it is nowadays. With there being fewer than 100 Subs initially, the exchange was only open at certain times, weekdays 8am – 11pm, Sundays 5.30am – 10am and 5.30pm – 8.30pm. With the larger exchanges, it was more cost effective to have operators as they were kept much busier than in smaller villages, this is why places like Scaynes Hill had a small automatic exchange back in the 1930s.
As the number of ‘subs’ increased, more positions could be added; by 1904 there were 28 Subscribers, by 1910, there were 54 and by 1920 there were 120. Haywards Heath was growing and the number of connections was fast outstripping what a small Central Battery System 1 (CBS1) exchange could cope with – plans were drawn up! A new Central Battery 10 (CB10) exchange opened upstairs at the Boltro Road site on August 30th, 1928. On opening it had 364 Subscribers and would provide service for another 37 years.
Telephone numbers were simple, starting at 0, they just increased as the capacity of the exchange did. 0 was always the exchange supervisor, 1 was the Post office and so on…
The constant expansion of Haywards Heath continued and by 1961 the number of ‘subs’ was fast approaching the design capacity of 2800 connections on the CB10 manual exchange.
By 31st March 1964 with a bit of technical wizardry, the number of connections had reached 2930, the ‘writing had been on the wall’ for some time so in 1960 plans had begun to be drawn up for a new automatic exchange; building began in 1962. The exchange’s number was up by 1964; there were 220 customers waiting for service – the new exchange couldn’t come quick enough!