Electricity Junction Box on Fitzwilliam Street

Summary

An electricity junction box/feeder pillar of 1895, manufactured in cast-iron by GW Tomlinson of Huddersfield.

Reasons for Designation

The electricity junction box on Fitzwilliam Street in Huddersfield, an electrical feeder pillar of 1895, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic interest:
*     it illustrates the development of electricity into a mass-consumed utility, and the importance accorded to its infrastructure in the early years;

*     as an increasingly rare survival of a relic from the first age of electricity.

Architectural interest:
*     for its well-detailed, customised design, surviving with relatively little alteration.

History

Consumer electricity arrived in Huddersfield in 1892, with the construction of a generating station at St Andrew’s Road (the borough had appointed AB Mountain as its electrical engineer in December 1891). Distribution and supply infrastructure was needed to transfer current from where it was generated to its point of use. The junction box, or feeder pillar, was designed to control the electrical supply to a number of buildings in the surrounding area.

This example was produced in 1895 at the Huddersfield foundry of GW Tomlinson, whose tender for supplying the boxes was approved by the corporation’s Electric Lighting Committee in June that year. Permission had earlier been granted for extending the electricity mains to Fitzwilliam Street. The Electricity Department’s showroom in the Imperial Arcade on New Street was opened in August 1895.

Details

An electricity junction box/feeder pillar of 1895, manufactured by GW Tomlinson of Huddersfield.

MATERIALS: cast-iron.

DESCRIPTION: standing at the north end of Huddersfield’s historic commercial core.

The box is very similar in appearance to examples by the Worcester foundry of Hardy and Padmore. The longer sides of the box face north and south. It stands around four feet high and has sides of 18 inches by 12 inches. It has a low pyramidal cap with castellated edges above a moulded cornice, supported at each corner by a small corbel. The north side has a door with two decorative strap hinges at the right-hand side, and three panels defined by raised edges with concave angles that host small, raised points. The central panel has a raised-edged roundel inscribed in relief, HUDDERSFIELD/ CORPORATION (top and bottom) and ELECTRICITY/ DEPARTMENT (centre).

The east side has a single tall panel with moulded edges. At the left, the hinge pintels of a south door are visible. The south and west sides are obscured by the adjacent stone walls.

Sources

Other
Huddersfield Corporation Electric Lighting Committee minutes, 5 June 1895
Membership records of Institution of Electrical Engineers, approval of full membership of AB Mountain, 13 Jan 1898
Request for tenders to supply cast-iron junction boxes to the corporation, Huddersfield Chronicle, 25 May 1895
Public notice for opening of Electricity Supply Department showroom, Huddersfield Daily Chronicle, 10 August 1895
‘Death of Huddersfield’s First Electrical Engineer’: obituary of AB Mountain, Huddersfield and Holmfirth Examiner, 27 October 1934

End of official list entry

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