Cable Hut at Porthcurno Telegraph Station, St. Levan, Cornwall

Description

ST LEVAN

1621/0/10009 THE VALLEY
17-SEP-08 CABLE HUT AT PORTHCURNO TELEGRAPH STAT
ION

II
Cable hut built in 1929 for Imperial and International Communications Ltd on the edge of Porthcurno beach. The rubble and concrete building is a small, single roomed, simple box shape, flat roofed structure with a wooden casement window in the E wall and central N facing door.

Internally, a metal frame attached to the wall on three sides supports a series of 14 cable terminal boxes, each labelled with its destination and a commutation frame. The cables enter the building through holes in the floor adjacent to the wall and are joined to land lines within the cable terminal boxes. The land-lines leave the box at the top and are carried underground to the telegraph station at Eastern House.

History: The electric telegraph was introduced in the 1830s. Samuel Morse's dot-dash code evolved from 1835, and the technology of long-distance telegraph communication developed rapidly thereafter, with the underground and submarine cables being developed from the 1850s. The first transatlantic telegraph cable was a British and American enterprise with the cable running from Foilhommerum, Valentia Island in western Ireland to Heart's Content in eastern Newfoundland. The first attempts met with limited success and it was not until 1866 that a lasting connection was achieved.

The telegraph station and training school at Porthcurno were established in 1870 when a cable from Carcavellos in Portugal laid by the Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta Telegraph Company arrived on the beach. This cable was the final link in a chain of cables leading from Bombay in India. The importance of this link at the height of the British Empire cannot be overstated. The original intention was to bring the cable ashore at Falmouth, but the sheltered, sandy beach at Porthcurno was felt to be a much more reliable option. The original telegraph station buildings were situated at and around what was to become known as Zodiac House. In 1872 the original company merged with three others to form the Eastern Telegraph Co. Ltd. A year later another cable was laid to Vigo in Spain and staff cottages were built in the valley. During the 1870s experiments to improve the quality and efficiency of the process were conducted at Porthcurno and were ultimately responsible for world-wide improvements in telegraph communication. In 1878, the third cable arrived at Porthcurno from the Isles of Scilly and a fourth to Gibraltar in 1887. The tennis courts were established on rented ground in the 1880s and separate accommodation for the Superintendent (Mercury House) was built in 1896. In the early part of the C20 considerable expansion of the operation saw many more cables brought into the valley. In 1904 the telegraph station moved across the valley to new purpose built fire-proofed accommodation at what was to become known as Eastern House. The arrival of another cable, this time to Fayal in the Azores in 1906 led to Eastern House being extended northward. In 1928 a conference held in London recommended an amalgamation of all the cable and wireless interests within the Empire. This resulted in the formation of Imperial and International Communications Ltd. The following year Porthcurno was accepted as the most important telegraph station in the British Empire, with 14 operational submarine cables terminating in a new concrete built cable hut situated close to the beach. The cable hut was erected when a number of cables were refurbished and a new cable link was laid from the hut to Eastern House. A few years later in 1934 the company changed its name to Cable & Wireless, the name it retains today.

During the World War II the importance and vulnerability of the telegraph station was recognised and the whole operation moved underground in early May 1941 into a pair of tunnels blasted into the adjacent hillside. Further protection was provided by a series of defences including barbed-wire entanglements, flood-lighting and flame throwers. Between the end of the war and 1950 the telegraph station was refurbished, extended and opened as a training school. In 1970, exactly 100 years after the arrival of the first cable, the telegraph station closed although the training school remained until 1993. Many of the modern buildings were dismantled, some were sold off and the remainder eventually transferred to the PK Trust who run Porthcurno Telegraph Museum.

Sources: Anon, Global from the start - A short history of Cable & Wireless (undated)
Barlow, D., From Spark to Satellite Marconi in Cornwall (undated), 33-35
Packer, J.E., The Porthcurno Handbook (undated)
St. Levan Local History Group, The book of St. Levan : crabs, croust and clerks (2004) 67-80
http://www.porthcurno.org.uk/html/centre.html Accessed 12th June 2008
http://www.atlantic-cable.com/CableCos/Porthcurno/ Accessed 12th June 2008

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION DECISION
The cable hut at Porthcurno Telegraph Station is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Unique survival of a telegraph cable hut complete with original fittings and features
* Contains the largest collection of historic telegraph cables and termination boxes in a single place
* Earliest surviving intact cable hut in England
* Forms part of the largest and most important telegraph station in the British Empire

Reasons for Listing

The cable hut at Porthcurno Telegraph Station has been designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Unique survival of a telegraph cable hut complete with original fittings and features
* Contains the largest collection of historic telegraph cables and termination boxes in a single place
* Earliest surviving intact cable hut in England
* Forms part of the largest and most important telegraph station in the British Empire

External Links

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