This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*
It is funny how the names of things stay with you, long after events have rendered them obsolete and consigned to history.
So, it is with the Gas Board, which was created just a year before I was born, and lasted until I was fully grown.
To be accurate there were twelve gas boards covering the country, and they had been created in 1948 by the Labour Government which nationalized the 1,062 privately owned and municipal gas companies. They were the Eastern, East Midlands, Northern, North Eastern, North Thames, North West, Scottish, Southern, South Eastern, South West, Wales, and West Midlands. Each area board was divided into geographical groups or divisions which were often further divided into smaller districts.
Ours was the South Eastern Gas Board, and here is the meter card for our house.
Not that we paid for our gas by slot meter. Dad had switched to paying quarterly, and so this payment card belonged to one of the previous owners, who was a G. Broome.
That said I do remember the chap who came to read the meter at regular intervals, a practice which lasted well into this century.
After which we opted to read it ourselves and send the reading in online and this in turn was replaced by a device which did it for us, and now by Hive, that box of tricks which pretty much does it all.
Despite all this buzzy technology I have never quite got round to referring to our gas provider by their name, and still talk of the Gas Board.
But then I also still talk about the wireless when everyone else calls it a radio.
Location; Well Hall
Pictures; the Gas Board Slot Meter Record Card, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall
It is funny how the names of things stay with you, long after events have rendered them obsolete and consigned to history.
So, it is with the Gas Board, which was created just a year before I was born, and lasted until I was fully grown.
To be accurate there were twelve gas boards covering the country, and they had been created in 1948 by the Labour Government which nationalized the 1,062 privately owned and municipal gas companies. They were the Eastern, East Midlands, Northern, North Eastern, North Thames, North West, Scottish, Southern, South Eastern, South West, Wales, and West Midlands. Each area board was divided into geographical groups or divisions which were often further divided into smaller districts.
Not that we paid for our gas by slot meter. Dad had switched to paying quarterly, and so this payment card belonged to one of the previous owners, who was a G. Broome.
That said I do remember the chap who came to read the meter at regular intervals, a practice which lasted well into this century.
After which we opted to read it ourselves and send the reading in online and this in turn was replaced by a device which did it for us, and now by Hive, that box of tricks which pretty much does it all.
Despite all this buzzy technology I have never quite got round to referring to our gas provider by their name, and still talk of the Gas Board.
But then I also still talk about the wireless when everyone else calls it a radio.
Location; Well Hall
Pictures; the Gas Board Slot Meter Record Card, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall
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