WonderWheeler
Member
It was good to see a picture of the middle of the ceiling in this thread. I see there is an electrical box, conduit, and four ventilation holes that go into the light unit above. I was glad to that documented.
Crich Box Original Location
- Thread starter starcross
- Start date
alexcutler
Member
hb88banzai said:
Hi 'hh88banzai'
Since you asked for 'thoughts' and I admit it is years since I have visited the Crich box -- you say it can be seen clearly that is says "F.U.D.C" - but to me it looks much more clearly like "F.H.D.C" - which would match Forest Hill.
Obviously that is from my idiotic glancing at the photo rather than being inside the box and seeing the actual carving in the wood - but I just wanted to share that what you say is clear, is by no means clear to me!
Please feel free to ignore this observation, but I am sharing on the 1 in a million chance that it might be helpful.
~Alex
hb88banzai
Active member
Yes, I can see how one might take it as an "H", but if you look closely there are indications that what you are seeing as a cross in the "H" is just a scar similar to that seen in the upper part of the first "E" in "Electricity."
View attachment 172091
First, you can see in the uprights in what I see as a "U" that they continue fairly clearly through the area where the cross of an "H" would connect to it, unlike anywhere else in the text, except where it is a discoloration from damage to the board.
Further, if you look down where the left upright on an "H" should continue down to the text baseline indicated by the other letters and periods, it instead ends well above that, around the middle of the nearby period, with no trace of any continuation of the vertical line. That area is quite clean and yet shows no bottom part of an "H", but does suggest a curve to the right, and a top part to the bottom connector of the "U" seems to also be visible.
To me, this could only indicate that it is in fact a "U".
Also, if it was "Forest Hill" then it should read F.H.U.D.C., though then the issue also arises that there appears to have been no Forest Hill Urban District Council, so the "D.C." would have to stand for something else. Finally, only three districts that started with "F" that had Boxes situated in them generated their own power at the time, so as to have their own Electricity Dept., namely Foots Cray, Fulham, and Finchley, as described above.
As you note, it isn't quite as clear as I suggested due to the condition of the board, and does require some reconstruction, but I feel the other supporting facts seem to confirm this particular interpretation.
View attachment 172091
First, you can see in the uprights in what I see as a "U" that they continue fairly clearly through the area where the cross of an "H" would connect to it, unlike anywhere else in the text, except where it is a discoloration from damage to the board.
Further, if you look down where the left upright on an "H" should continue down to the text baseline indicated by the other letters and periods, it instead ends well above that, around the middle of the nearby period, with no trace of any continuation of the vertical line. That area is quite clean and yet shows no bottom part of an "H", but does suggest a curve to the right, and a top part to the bottom connector of the "U" seems to also be visible.
To me, this could only indicate that it is in fact a "U".
Also, if it was "Forest Hill" then it should read F.H.U.D.C., though then the issue also arises that there appears to have been no Forest Hill Urban District Council, so the "D.C." would have to stand for something else. Finally, only three districts that started with "F" that had Boxes situated in them generated their own power at the time, so as to have their own Electricity Dept., namely Foots Cray, Fulham, and Finchley, as described above.
As you note, it isn't quite as clear as I suggested due to the condition of the board, and does require some reconstruction, but I feel the other supporting facts seem to confirm this particular interpretation.
alexcutler
Member
Very happy to be demonstrated wrong. Thank-you for your forensic approach! 
hb88banzai said:
Honestly, I am seeing F. H. D. C. too. Although, I don't see the left upright of the H going all the way down.
That said, I'm not sure the T in electric does either. In both cases they are damaged though.
I'm curious, though, why (if it was Forest Hill) would there HAVE to be a U too?
Dying to get to the bottom of this mystery too!
hb88banzai
Active member
Rassilons Rod said:Honestly, I am seeing F. H. D. C. too. Although, I don't see the left upright of the H going all the way down.
That said, I'm not sure the T in electric does either. In both cases they are damaged though.
I'm curious, though, why (if it was Forest Hill) would there HAVE to be a U too?
Dying to get to the bottom of this mystery too!
Oh, how I wish Mark or Matt had a soft brush with them to dust off all those cobwebs before snapping this pic. Wondering if the spider in the big hole obliterating the lower right of that letter is an actual spider, or just its shed skin?
Anyway, I still see your points, and don't think I didn't go through a lot of head scratching before I settled on my conclusions.
The "T" in ELECTRICITY does seem to go down to the same baseline as the other letter to me, at least if you judge it by the frosty highlights of the dusty cobweb that seems to be filling it in there, just like most all of the other letters.
As to the "H", in looking at it again (for the hundredth time) it just reinforces in my mind that the proposed "H" horizontal connector looks like a gouge to me, with it being flaked off relatively cleanly with the grain a bit shallower than the text.
What cinches it for me is that if you follow that depression to the left downstroke it ends in a clean line of that downstroke rather than merging into it the way all the horizontals do on the other letters, like the "E"s and "F"s.
Also, if you follow that vertical line down it seems to be continuous from the top and then gently curving to the right to form the top of the connector to a "U" -- at least that's the suggestion to my eyes. What a place to put a cobweb.
As to the need for a letter in front of the "D.C", that would be because there were, if I recall correctly, only three types of broad government bodies at the time involved in regional power production and distribution (discounting County Councils, which would be a "C.C." anyway), those were Municipal Boroughs, Urban Districts, and Rural Districts, so the three choices for abbreviations are "M.B.C.", "U.D.C.", and "R.D.C.". At least that's my understanding.
Oh, and it appears Forest Hill was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Lewisham anyway, so wouldn't have had any of those designations on its own. It would have been under the authority of the L.M.B.C.
Thanks for that rephrasing, I can see more where you're coming from nowhb88banzai said:
hb88banzai said:
What would Forty Hill have been part of?
hb88banzai
Active member
Rassilons Rod said:
I believe Forty Hill was part of the Enfield Urban District within the County of Middlesex before 1955, when it became the Enfield Municipal Borough, which itself was combined with several other neighboring Municipal Boroughs to form the current London Borough of Enfield in 1965. So it would have been under the authority of the E.U.D.C. when the Met Boxes were sited, or later the E.M.B.C. just before they were removed.
hb88banzai said:
Ah, so that U is still just as important, then.
Curiouser and curiouser!
hb88banzai
Active member
Here is the image cropped to the area in question and further enhanced--
Volpone
Administrator
So the letters were burned into the wood (branded, as it were). On top of that, it looks like the drill bit used to make that hole wasn't as sharp as it could've been and the heat from drilling burned the wood a bit too, creating the illusion of an "H". Because in the enlarged photo, I clearly see the rounded bottom of the "U".
hb88banzai
Active member
Teppic said:
No, not half the height. I think you are fixated on the flaked out gouge as being part of the letter, and I don't think it is, for all the reasons given above.
The actual bottom of the "U" that I see is just a little above the level of the bottom of the white cobweb (or egg sac remnant) attached at the bottom of the letter, so exactly the same height as the other letters in the string.
As I said, what a horrible place to put a cobweb!
hb88banzai
Active member
Here is the same enhanced image (just adjusted levels and some unsharp mask) with the (in my opinion) gouged area repaired using the stamp tool, while being careful not to touch any of the letter itself.
Note that the faint white outline on the edges of the inner part of the "U" has not been retouched or added. It was always there, and is part of what convinced me that this was in fact a "U".
I find it interesting that they left the full stop off of the "C".
Note that the faint white outline on the edges of the inner part of the "U" has not been retouched or added. It was always there, and is part of what convinced me that this was in fact a "U".
I find it interesting that they left the full stop off of the "C".
Ok, now I'm seeing the U shape more clearly. What we've been seeing as a cross-bar is some different kind of damage.
I wonder, could it have been Fulham?
I wonder, could it have been Fulham?
hb88banzai
Active member
Rassilons Rod said:
As indicated in the admittedly lengthy Post #35 earlier in this discussion, Fulham (though it met many of the other criteria) was discounted because it was a Municiple Borough Council, so the abbreviation would have read "F.M.B.C." rather than "F.U.D.C".
peterjohn said:
As per the same Post, the only candidate that met all criteria was Finchley Urban District Council, at least until 1933, when it became a Municipal Borough. Which in turn led to the theory presented in that Post that the original electrical panel from the first Y14's Mark 1 (whose electrical fittings would indeed have been installed by the F.U.D.C. Electricity Dept.) was retained when it was resited and replaced by a Mark 4 due to wartime and immediate post-war rationing/recycling of critical building materials, like teak. Per the documentation obtained by Matt and Mark during their visits to Crich, the Met indicated that the electrical panel was the only interior furnishing that was original to the donated Mark 4, which had recently been removed from just off the North Circular Road.
We know that Y14 was one of the original Mark 1's installed in 1929-1930 by the Met as part of the initial experimental Police Box System trials in V & Y Divisions. We further know from photographic evidence that it was replaced by a Mark 4 like that at Crich by the 1950s, and there is circumstantial reason to believe this was in fact done when the North Circular Road's path there was revised and the Box moved northward to the other side circa 1944-1945, exactly when the need to retain perfectly useable materials would have been highest.
So yes, this electrical panel appears to be pre-1933 and likely from the original Mark 1 iteration of Y14 sited near the Pub (all but confirmed by the panel being smaller than later standards per the Trench & GPO blueprints, etc.), but the Box itself is not, rather dating from the mid-to-late 1940's like all other Mark 4's seem to be.
All this (and more--see Post #35) seems to support the proposition that the Met Box at Crich was Y14 at Glanfield's Corner, Finchley. Now, where the rest of the internal furnishings, the top beacon, and the phone door sign came from are still unknown, as they were all missing when the Crich personnel were first shown the Box at Hendon.