also:

http://g.co/maps/sgver
and
http://g.co/maps/7s9wz

Nice one.

Sure we don't any here but must be some somewhere, just not noticed.

Just found the picture to do with an airfiled I guess.

Zoomed out and now can see where you are. Did the other road lower down out of Taunton to get to butlins I guess.

Nice area for walks, loads of woods.
getting off the point now!.

Had another look, might have done bridgewater so gone past you and as a guess not 2 .5 minutes if that from there, whats the chance.

Hello Adrian

Cant ever think I have seen any of these.
Like we don't have here.

Off the point but do think google streetmap is a dog boll****.

has it's use.

so said had GPO or BT on and was right.
just 1 person asking a question and days later still it goes on.

Shame I cant do the photo or google thing but never seen any.

I assume you mean a dog bollard, for use in the absence of lamp posts.

Nice one.

could be but not what I had in mind

The GPO/PO was not a "Telco" as thought of today; but it was the the only Telephone provider for most of the UK except Hull, after the amalgamation or nationalisation of the many local 19th century companies, until the 1980s, when the Telephone functions were split of as "British Telecomms", the "BT" of today.

During my 1950s Apprenticeship in Radio and Radar, we had to attend evening classes at the Heriot-Watt College (now University) in Edinburgh.

Basically those classes were run by the H-W for the Post Office Telephone BOYS as they were generally referred to.

Thus although I have never worked in the Telephone Industry, many of my qualifications are directly and almost uniquely associated with it and the PO Boys and Engineers.

PO Telephones provided the staff for the communications links handling TV and Radio Transmissions, such as the one coming up from Sutton Coldfield via Newcastle etc to the Terminal Station at Kirk o' Shotts TV Transmitter. The video and audio signals were passed over to another building manned by BBC Engineering Staff, for amplification, modulation etc, before passing up to the Transmission Aerials at the top of the 750 foot mast.

This split responsibility was made clear when I visited the site about 1955, as also the Westerglen Radio Transmitter near Falkirk.

It was a "PO Telephones Engineer", Tommy Flowers, who was involved in the development of the early war-time computers, used to decipher the Enigma Codes.

Near my Edinburgh home was the "Post Office Telephones" Garage, with its green "glasshouse" Morris vans, own petrol pump; and several thousand Telephone Poles, impregnated with creosote at 70 PSI.

So the GPO/PO had a much wider remit than than realised today.

=============================

My present home is just 30 yards away, "across the road" from the main Distribution Cabinet for the estate - but my phone line travels east away from the cabinet, for about to a similar small junction box as has been illustrated, before somehow heading for the cabinet.

So an apparently short 30 yard run is at least 150 yards long.

OK, not been on here for a few days......

That is a jointing post. It is a DP (distribution point) in the same way as the box on the top of a pole is, or the main box in a block of flats.
Inside there will be a main feed cable, most commonly a 20 pair one, and then the ends of the local cables that go to the individual houses nearby.
There is currently a project underway to replace the lids for these with ones made of plastic, this is stop dissuade the criminal fraternity from half-inching the lids.
It is common for them to get 're-made' back in to the adjacent footway box, as you can imagine, several decades spent at dog pee height makes them far from ideal housings for a telephone joint.

I would guess that the area where the OP was walking had houses built between 1965 and 1975.......

Hello, thanks for the info!

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I would guess that the area where the OP was walking had houses built between 1965 and 1975.......

Yes, that would be about right!

Furthermore the clutch of posts that I found in the other part of town were marked PO instead of GPO, and the houses there would be from the mid-1970s so it all correlates. They were all co-located near big square manhole covers, presumably for accessing the cable?

So my next question is, how do I decode the legend on the manhole covers?

DA W PO 73 No 4

Easier if I just show some pictures: The Story So Far

In the second picture on your link, the four digit number is almost certainly the 'DP' number, so the number identifying which distribution point it is.

Not made of asbestos, but I still wouldn't recommend licking one.

If undone, the lid slides off and that reveals the cables inside.

DA W not a clue. Post Office, 1973, and a number 4 footway box, for the rest.