The Development of Telecoms - Peterborough
Although Peterborough is well known for its Cathedral, the Peterborough telephone area has many other claims to fame. Here is Bourne, birthplace of Hereward the Wake and the British Racing Motors car; Oundle Public School; and the sands of bracing Skegness.
Other towns in the area include Boston, famous for its lantern-towered church, "Boston Stump"; St. Ives, with its chapel in the middle of the bridge over the River Ouse; and Wisbech, inland port on the River Nene.
The varied industries of the area include the manufacture of agricultural machinery, steam rollers and diesel engines. Natural resources include large brickyards, ironstone workings, cement works and the finest arable land for root crops in Britain.
Here is the country of potatoes and sugar-beet and strawberries, of vast expanses of tulip fields around Spalding and of long straight "drains", which draw anglers from all parts of Britain.
The Royal Foxhound Show and Peterborough Agricultural Show attract large crowds to Peterborough every summer and call for the provision of many temporary exchange lines.
The area contains some 2,051 square miles. It has Ermine Street as its backbone, from Caxton Gibbet in the southeast to Gonerby Moor in the north-west.
It contains 124 exchanges, 91 per cent of them automatic – the largest percentage in the Provinces. They serve 26,848 exchange lines and 44,069 stations. Mole-drained cable runs for miles through the rich black Fen soil, linking many isolated farmers with civilisation. The total staff numbers 714.
