Lighting
Ian Slatter recalls a neighbour of his as a child, a Mr. Hooppell, who was the town’s lamplighter:
He used to go round on a pushbike until about 1948. He’d go round at night, had a chain on them with a pilot light, and he would just go and, with a hook like a boat hook, pull the chain and put the street lights on. He’d come around first thing in the morning and turn them out. The whole town was gas lit.
When electrification arrived in the 1950s, Ian Slatter’s family in Collapark were one of the first houses to have it installed. The first appliances installed were electric lighting. Marion Adams recalls growing up with gas lights in the house, and when Vera Harvey’s house was electrified in the 1950s, their landlord only put it in downstairs, so they had electric lights downstairs, but still needed candles upstairs. Similarly, Muriel Langford, living in a flat above the High Street after the war recalls having “gas, no electricity. We had gas lights”.
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