Is there any online database of historic UK telephone numbers?

[Nickthedentist]

Hello everyone,

I collect run-of-the mill British phones, mainly 200/300/700 series. Cheap, fun to restore, attractive, useful (for the time being anyway).

Many which I get hold of seem to be "as-recovered" when taken out of service, and come complete with their (presumably) original dial centre labels. (In phones with drawers, you can occasionally find a GPO dialling code card complete with the owner's name, address and telephone number typed on it. But this is very rare, I find. Usually, the only form of ID is the phone number on the dial label).

I always try Googling the number, either as-printed, or "modernised" with current dialling codes etc. Once in a blue moon, this leads me to details of the original installation, which I find fascinating. But usually, it gets me nowhere.

As an example, the red 706 (dated 1966) which I'm playing with at the moment has a dial label with "Brixton 4599" and a more modern one saying "01-274 4599" sandwiched on top of it. This equates to "020-7274 4599" in today's scheme. But no luck tracing it so far.

Any general ideas?

Thanks,

Nick.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Hi Nick, I got two hits from 1959 and 1960 on the British Newspaper Archive. On topic too,
"A HIGH price paid for your tele-vision, radiogram, tape recorder or refrigerator..."
Unfortunately the site had wrongly OCRd the telephone number and it was Brixton 4533.

So, close, but no cigar.

Nevertheless I can recommend the BNA for this sort of research.

For example the landline number for my property has been unchanged since the early 1950s. The earliest reference I could find was 1939 at an address about 150 meters away, they had a house to let. A bit later, during the war they were offering air-raid shelters from the same address.