Everything about telegraph poles you were afraid to ask

The annual Expo attracts crowds of telegraph pole enthusiasts to a huge exhibition of ceramic and glass insulators, lightning rods and other telegraphic attachments.

These telegraph pole accessories are called ‘teleramics’ by Martin Evans, founder of The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society (TPAS).

Living “in the middle of nowhere” in west Wales with his wife Keri, 62-year-old Martin collects teleramics and has two telegraph poles lying in his garden “waiting to be put up some time. ” They’ll have to wait a while longer!

With over 1,300 fully paid-up members and “tens of thousands of visitors from all around the world” his TPAS website and Facebook pages keep the former IT specialist extremely busy. His book ‘Telegraph Pole Appreciation for Beginners’ is hailed by reviewers as “delightfully nerdy, exquisitely eccentric.”

Equally admired is his video - ‘Telegraph Poles on the B5105’ - documenting the 13-mile road from the market town of Ruthin to the village of Clawddnewydd in Denbighshire, Wales.

While most viewers won’t be able to remember (or pronounce!) the village’s name, they won’t forget Martin’s evocative descriptions of the fast disappearing telegraph poles that once carried copper wires aside, above and along the B5105.

He commends the road as “one of my favourite runs of poles in the entire country” and is upset by the ever increasing gaps. But he’s greatly cheered by the elderly pole “that is still standing and has no sign of a D-plate!”

A little metal disc marked with the letter ‘D’ means ‘decayed’ - the pole’s death sentence.

Other letterings, numbers and hieroglyphics convey vital information to telegraph workers.

‘C’ means climbable; ‘H’ means adjacent to a hazard that can only be eliminated by a hoist or crane; ‘Z’ is a hazard that can be solved with a ladder and ‘DP’ is a distribution point - a sort of a ‘terminal box’ or switchboard.

What attracted Martin to telegraph poles?

“When I was a little boy,” he reminisced “I lived out in the rural Welsh marches (an imprecisely defined area along the border between England and Wales) and I was a lonely, moody little boy. I would gaze out of the window at the telegraph poles and then follow them to see where they went, and I anthropomorphised them a little bit as well.”

He thus became one of the many hundreds of thousands of telegraph pole enthusiasts all around the globe.

As well as today’s event in Wheaton, the United Sates alone boasts over 3,000 telegraph pole insulator clubs, auctions, fairs and exhibitions.

“We don't care what the telegraph wires contain”, Martin told me, “they all carry electricity in some way, be it the sparky stuff which boils your kettle, or the thinner stuff with your voice in it when you’re on the phone.”

He often comes here so how does he rate our poles?

“There are some interesting ones, but all the old ones with lots of wooden arms (horizontal ‘beams’) on them have gone.” There’s tangible sadness in his voice which lifts on mentioning a fine ‘half arm’ pole in Wexford.

What’s his most historic specimen?

“South west Scotland is the best place for old poles,” he explained, adding, “I know of least two or three in that area of Scotland. They’re 1880s and 1890s, very old poles, and they’re still standing.

"And there is a historic one in the museum in Kirkwall in the Orkneys. It was the oldest pole ever so they took it down and put it in the museum.”

Kirkwall’s relic is date-stamped 1894, and there’s a 30-foot pole near Oilmills Bridge in Ebley, Stroud, from around 1895/96.

“All wire-carrying wooden poles have an essence of whimsical poetry all of their own,” Martin mused “there they stand, silent sentinels, forever observing us who scurry about beneath them, oblivious.”

And don’t think that the world is only mindful of them on the 1st of April!

There’s an annual Telegraph Pole Appreciation Day on 21st September and while the current TPAS calendar has sold out there’s an endless supply of pictures, stories and information at www.telegraphpoleappreciationsociety.org