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Old 22nd Jul 2021, 8:35 pm   #1
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Default The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

Does any one recall in the 1960's, a small TV Shop in Archway Rd Highgate, called the TV Graveyard, it was located close to the Woodman's Pub.
It sold scrap TV's, Valves, CRT's and TV components etc.
I think a untested 405 Telly could be purchased for 15/-
That's 75p, for you youngsters.
The owner was a bit eccentric to say the least.

Ken, G6HZG.
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Old 22nd Jul 2021, 11:21 pm   #2
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

I remember seeing adverts in old editions Practical Television Magazine probably late '50s or early '60s for something like 17" tv BBC/ ITA untested at around £1/10s each, delivery by passenger train at extra charge.
So I assume you ordered the set and then picked it up from your local railway station? I can just imagine what you got!
I suppose there were many places doing the same thing dotted around the country.
Rich
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Old 22nd Jul 2021, 11:57 pm   #3
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

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Originally Posted by slidertogrid View Post
I suppose there were many places doing the same thing dotted around the country.
Even a little radio and TV shop here in Fakenham a stone's throw from our present flat had a back room full of untested sets on offer for a while around 1969, all 15/- each. My vague memory says they all dated from around 1954-58: I never saw much older sets than that around here, I always assumed it was because transmitter coverage took that long to reach Norfolk. I paid my fifteen bob, took home a TV62 and persuaded it to work for a while. Maybe should get it going again now it's had nearly fifty years' rest.

I think the "Graveyard" was still advertising in the late '60s, plenty of 110 degree sets by then.

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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 6:06 am   #4
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

There was Padgett in Yorkshire,
"TV graveyard of the North" so the ad stated.
used to advertise in Practical TV.. I understand
he was a bit eccentric.

Last edited by Mr Hoover; 23rd Jul 2021 at 6:23 am.
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 9:16 am   #5
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

Old thread about Padgett here..
https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...ad.php?t=49209
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 9:33 am   #6
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

There must have been a huge shift from 405 to 625 line sets and colour in the early seventies. They must have been quite hard to dispose of; which leads me to a memory etched in me from my early teens. I went on a school summer camp at West Malvern (actually not all that far from me), and as a group one day we walked from one end to the other of the Malvern Hills. En route we past a vast pile of burnt out television sets. A mass of ashes, tangled metal and glass.. it shocked me at the time, hence the memory but clearly fly tipping isn't a new thing.
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 9:57 am   #7
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

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There must have been a huge shift from 405 to 625 line sets and colour in the early seventies.
Yes, there was with the colour boom and people who hadn't bothered with BBC2 on 625 getting rid of their mid to late 50's well used dual channel sets. One didn't realise at the time what a golden age it was to get hold of these tellies for next to nothing.
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 10:09 am   #8
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

People weren't so aware of the environment back then. I often found sets and chassis dumped. The local TV shop would often burn old sets. Until I started scrounging them!
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 10:31 am   #9
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

I was often given old, not-working TV sets in the late 60's/early 70's. Scrounged components out of them, and the valves were used as targets for my air gun (as they weren't 6.3v ones).
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 2:20 pm   #10
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

I like the word 'untested'. Means so much!
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 5:20 pm   #11
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

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I was often given old, not-working TV sets in the late 60's/early 70's. Scrounged components out of them, and the valves were used as targets for my air gun (as they weren't 6.3v ones).
My local TV dealer's workshop would give me as many scrap TVs as I wanted in the late 60s. They would helpfully knock the necks off the tubes so that I didn't kill myself when they imploded. These would have been mostly late 50s sets which my long suffering dad had to collect in the car.
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 5:42 pm   #12
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

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delivery by passenger train at extra charge.
So I assume you ordered the set and then picked it up from your local railway station? I can just imagine what you got!
That would have been the Red Star Parcel Service which I experienced once way back in the 1970s when a friend who had lost his licence asked me to take him and a pair of Quad Electrostatics from London to Quad's Service centre in Huntingdon using a relative's Morris Minor pickup he'd borrowed.
Whilst waiting for the service we 'did the shops' and he bought a large art deco china cabinet little realising that when we'd loaded back the boxed speakers I wouldn't be able to see out of the rear view mirror!
With some reshuffling we safely stashed the cabinet plus one of the speakers and sent the other one by Red Star from Huntingdon to London, picking it up completely undamaged when we got back.

Of course the Quad was in its original shipping carton and I doubt that many of the second hand TV sets you refer to were equally well protected!

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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 8:52 pm   #13
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

Hello All

Ahhhhhh……The TV Graveyard Archway Road, Highgate, London N6.

This was my Mecca as a 12-year-old lad in the early 1960’s. It was owned by a lovely eccentric bloke named Les Darley. I went to the same school Tollington Grammar as his son in my home town of Muswell Hill about 2 miles from Highgate. Les’s stock came from local repair men and dealers usually in the back of estate cars. Sets were piled high in the shop and he would allow you to take the back or bottom cover off. Les would lend you his “tester” an ancient GPO detector No4.

Cold tests only-no plugging in! Prices were marked on the screen with whitewash 5/- for single channel (LV30 PYE etc) 7/6- for early band 111 sets - Valves were 6d each (tested for heater continuity with the trusty Detector 4) - CRTs 10/- on average - Loudspeakers 3/6d (usually bought for car radios). His big seller was large focus magnets popular with the nefarious for “slowing down” their electricity meters!

I was limited as to what I could buy as we had no family car. 12” Fergusons were my favourites as these fitted nicely on top of my drop handlebar pushbike. I did use to take some home on the bus but they had to fit in the compartment under the stairs of a Routemaster. This meant “hiding” my latest treasure behind the bus shelter to check that the 134 or 43 buses had a Muswell Hill Garage marker (MH) on the side as my Uncle George was a foreman garage hand there and I was known as his “telly mad nephew” so was rarely refused or indeed rarely asked to pay the 1½d child fare by the lovely old conductors. Happy days! For bigger console sets I made a 4 wheeled barrow and walked the 4 miles there and back pushing it. I soon learnt to spot tube heater transformers and avoid Mazda round tubes but I have since learned to love EKCO’s.

Les was an interesting man a truly loveable eccentric with according to his son a very hard war (WW2). His passion was horse racing woe betide you if you had the temerity to disturb him upstairs if the racing was on the telly. He had a bell push to call him if needed (two bits of old bell wire poking out of the wall). If you were “trusted” as I, was you had a code by which you could identify yourself to apply to the bell. Knowing I was trying (in vain) to learn Morse he suggested I use a racecourse name in Morse. Being Les he suggested the then local Ally Pally racecourse at Alexandra Park but I knew my limitations so we settled on Ascot! The shop lasted until the end of the sixties; I think. I started work in 1966. I rediscovered my love for old telly’s 11 years ago. I now have far too many with examples of most of the sets I dragged home from Highgate by bike bus or barrow.

As an aside I funded my hobby by working as a delivery boy at 1/6- an hour on Saturdays in a lovely old-fashioned grocery/hardware shop in Colney Hatch Lane Muswell Hill think ‘Open all Hours’. I stayed working there at weekends until 1979 when the owner retired and the premises were sold to a Mr Tim Martin and Weatherspoons pub chain was born.

Thanks to all who have helped me rediscover the wonderful world of old telly’s.

Hope I haven’t bored you all.

Regards Steve.

Last edited by Radio Wrangler; 24th Jul 2021 at 5:09 am. Reason: De-vehiculated
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 9:00 pm   #14
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

Quote:
Originally Posted by slidertogrid View Post
delivery by passenger train at extra charge.
So I assume you ordered the set and then picked it up from your local railway station?
Rich
Red Star Parcels was a fabulous service from the railways, you delivered a package to the nearest station, it was shipped by scheduled train to the destination where the recipient collected. Cheap? Yes. Reliable? Yes. I used to have a business in Settle, Yorkshire and we used Red Star all the time, it saved us a huge amount in shipping nightmares and cost.
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 10:01 pm   #15
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

It seems that the rail companies have missed a good opportunity here ! I sold a vintage radio on a auction site the buyer asked me if I could meet him at the railway station in Peterborough to hand it over. He was a retired employee who had a lifetime rail pass. He had come from Scotland to pick up the set!
To be able to put something on a train for someone to collect from their local station would be much better than some couriers and help take some of the traffic off the road! Another example of how things have gone backwards!
I agree that the colour take up was probably the reason there was so many old sets available in the mid 1970's The local Murphy dealer was disposing of loads of the "barrel " sets there was usually more than one every Saturday when I turned up with my go-cart so sometimes two or three trips was necessary.
These sold well to mates at school as to get BBC1 on 405 you only needed a couple of feet of wire ! These sets often worked or needed very little to get them going. There was another dealer that helped me no end with circuits and advice I remember saying to him that I couldn't understand why working sets were being thrown out he suggested that it was because they were ***kin old that's why! Peterborough was still a fairly small place back then.
No wonder then that big cities were loused out with old sets!
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Old 23rd Jul 2021, 11:26 pm   #16
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

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Originally Posted by beltinge bore View Post
Hello All

Ahhhhhh……The TV Graveyard Archway Road, Highgate, London N6...


...Hope I haven’t bored you all.

Regards Steve.
That was a nice story Steve - very interesting to me
cheers
M
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Old 24th Jul 2021, 7:34 am   #17
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

Steve,
I am so glad I am not the only one on here, who visited the shop.
Now you mention it, I do now recall his name Les, and his passion for a flutter on the Nags, I seem to remember him having quite a few Kids, and did he drive a scruffy old Roller ? 1920`s vintage, not sure of the Model.
Coincidence too, I also got the 134 bus Home, but in the opposite direction to NW5 Kentish Town.

Thanks again Steve.
Ken, G6HZG.
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Old 24th Jul 2021, 8:42 am   #18
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

Great reminiscences, Steve Thank you for taking the time to post them in such a well-written style ... the mental imagery really kicked in for me.

Best wishes
Guy
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Old 24th Jul 2021, 9:01 am   #19
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Default Re: The TV Graveyard Highgate London.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mole42uk View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by slidertogrid View Post
delivery by passenger train at extra charge.
So I assume you ordered the set and then picked it up from your local railway station?
Rich
Red Star Parcels was a fabulous service from the railways, you delivered a package to the nearest station, it was shipped by scheduled train to the destination where the recipient collected. Cheap? Yes. Reliable? Yes. I used to have a business in Settle, Yorkshire and we used Red Star all the time, it saved us a huge amount in shipping nightmares and cost.
I remember that! There was a locked cage that parcels were put in, and usually strapped in place. But back in the day with nationalised railways, this sort of thing was easy. The rail network was seen as a service, so since parcel carriage was a service it was a straightforward choice.

The problem with today's trains is that the operator does not own them. They lease them only. So train types are pretty much standardised. Adding a feature like a parcels cage would be subject to a business case: do we get more revenue from packing in more passengers, or from parcels?

In the US, Greyhound buses operate a parcels service. So if you want to get a hefty piece of kit from A to B, Greyhound is by far the cheapest. And safest.

Craig
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Old 24th Jul 2021, 10:42 am   #20
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Hello Ken

I worked in Gulliver (485) telephone exchange in Kentish Town during my Post Office apprenticeship days.

Les must have earned more from the horses he backed than from flogging PYE V4's etc. I believe he had 11 kids and was on his 3rd wife many years his junior - no wonder he was so slim!

The old Roller was fitted with a massive Klaxon horn on the roof, I often wondered if he had "liberated" it from a Panzer tank during his wartime visits to France.

He loved France and I think one of his wives was French. I was just a snotty teenager but he always treated me with respect.

Regards Steve.
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