Procter House

Procter House - Home of TXE4 Development

Procter House was the home of the TXE4 development team throughout the 1970s and 80s.

Surprisingly, there was no equipment there at all. If you wanted to work on TXE4 kit you either had to go to the STC factory in New Southgate or to one of a growing number of exchange sites.

Photo: Procter House, High Holborn. The old south extrance (far left) is locked off behind shutters © Light Straw Archive July 2007.

Overview

Operational developments were planned from Procter House, High Holborn in London and testing was carried out both at the STC factory in New Southgate and a various live exchanges throughout the country. In-service faults were tedious to trace, but this was often the only way to test for compatibility with the wide range of signalling conditions on the BT Network.

"We used various sites for testing different develpments. All the MF4 tests were at Perivale (Ealing). We also did a lot of testing at Manchester Blackfriars, Fleet and North Paddington. ND (Non-Director) testing was often done at Leighton Buzzard (home of the old TXE1). Of course, we also visited many exchanges to deal with specific service problems."

Procter House

	Procter House was constructed in the 1960s with 126,806 square feet of office space and 22 retail units. Photo: Procter House, South © Light Straw Archive July 2000.
	Procter House was originally let to British Telecom until 24th March 1998 at a rent of £3,740,000 per annum. Photo: Procter House, South © Light Straw Archive July 2000.

The Development Team

In 1974 Nigel Pope was typical of a university graduate starting work with the London Post Office Telecommunications. His first job was to join the team who was developing a new type of telephone exchange called TXE4. The production version of the exchange had only been running since 1971, so there were still many problems to smooth out and plenty of scope for enhancements.

Photo: Nigel Pope at his desk in Procter House © Nigel Pope 1981.

STC

Standard Telephones and Cables (STC) was once one of the biggest manufacturers of telecommunications products in the UK. Submarine cables, telephone switching equipment, telephones, switchboards, the list goes on...

The TXE4s were manufactured at STC, Oakleigh Road South, New Southgate, London, N11.

The Division also specialised in Telephone Switching: Step-by-Step Systems, Electronic Switching Systems and Subscriber Apparatus and Acoustics.

Leaflet: STC Locations in the United Kingdom.

Design, images and text compiled by © Light-Straw. With special thanks to Nigel Pope.
Page last updated 1st Jan 2016. Checked May 2021.

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