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Wren House operated 24 hours a day, but even allowing for the time zone differences, there were quiet periods when only a few positions needed to be staffed. |
With the newly introduced orange carpet (over the wooden flooring), and the turquoise and mauve covered chairs, the 1980s styled switchrooms of Wren were all very similar. The four switchrooms were:
1st Floor: East and West
2nd Floor: East and West
Hazel Brewer who worked in Wren between 1974 and 1979 writes...
"Even in the late 1970s there were still a few “radio only” routes, namely Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and the Falkland Islands. We also had some OP/AP manual routes where the operator service was better than when they all went IDD. A lot of these routes still had to be booked on time assignment (TA) and one place not to be was 2E of Wren House at 1300 when the White Plains (NY) operator would come through and book her calls to the Cocoa Board of Accra two days in advance and be most disappointed that we could only offer the dregs of time slots."
By the early 1980s, Wren House was operating 24 hours a day and employed more than 1000 telephonists and supervisors, dealing with 7000 calls per day.
The Calls
The 107/108 codes were still being used, but mainly for calls that could not be reached by IDD (International Direct Dialling). Wren dealt with almost one-third of calls to 107 and all calls to 108. Additionally, 'V' opals took calls from provincial subscribers for the same services. Vias (more commonly known as 'transits') were calls that had to be routed via another country's telephone service as direct links were not in place. For example, calls to the South Pacific Isles would be routed via Sydney, Australia.
Calls through Wren House included:
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Thus, in 1981, Wren House provided the only operator access to the less developed countries and with no more than one or two exceptions it was the only means of telephone access, IDD to those countries being for the most part, wishful thinking. Basically Wren House controlled all routes outside Europe, North America and Australasia. The huge populations of the Indian sub-continent and to a lesser extent the Commonwealth countries of Africa were confined telephonically to a mere handful of circuits to London with inevitable congestion and delay for much of each day. In the case of India and Pakistan, the routes were jammed solid 24 hours a day and no one but the operators who worked these routes can fully appreciate just what was required to get calls through to their destinations.
"Talking to Accra was very difficult, a big problem with their version of the English language and their insistence on getting all their UK bound calls connected before they could be bothered connecting ours to Ghana."
Frequently bartering was the order of the day with operators from Chandigarh, Jullundur and Dacca to Lagos, Accra and Freetown insisting that it was much more important to get their calls connected to the UK than it was to get 'our' calls connected to them. It may not have been strictly according to the rules, but operators might sometimes tell their overseas counterpart that they just weren't going to get any more calls to London until they let one of ours through. Frightening as it might seem, the average successful call via Wren House took several man hours of effort to be connected. A good international operator worked very hard and gained little reward; less money than a clerical assistant in the bosses' offices, yet it was the operators who were the only people earning any money.
"The period was one of constant change as routes switched from delay to demand working. There were a few initiatives to try to improve the service which Wren House could give its customers and at one time visits to the Indian exchanges were arranged so that staff at each end could gain a greater understanding of each other's problems; but the benefits proved to be very short-lived."
A better idea came from Brian Hordle who had been the manager of Wren some years earlier. Brian proposed that the services could only be improved by providing equipment, second hand, to the developing countries who could not otherwise afford it. This proved to be a great success so far as the customer was concerned, so successful in fact that IDD soon became possible and the number of UK to Pakistan calls, for example, rose from about 7,000 a month via the operator to nearly 200,000 calls a month via the switches. A good illustration of just how much suppressed demand there was from UK customers which had until then been directed only at Wren House's operators.
The Falklands Conflict
The Falklands War provided an interesting interlude as Wren was responsible for the HF radio route to the island and to the intermediate Atlantic staging post, Ascension Island. Wren House staff maintained contact with Port Stanley throughout the conflict despite the Argentinians steering the aerial towards Buenos Aires. However eventually they were persuaded to point it at the UK again and the telephone service resumed despite the ongoing hostilities. Later when the switchroom manager met some of the Falkland Island exchange staff (invited to London by the then Mrs. Thatcher) he learnt that they had the muzzles of machine guns in their backs when speaking to the Wren House staff.
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The Flaklands conflict, as it was also known, raised a few smiles in the switchroom, but throughout the hostilities, Jenny (pictured opposite) worked hard monitoring the current situation... |
The staff had their fair share of problems which occasionally affected the smooth running of the switchroom; for instance...
Late for Duty
The time when the police rang the Senior Telecoms Superintendent to say that they had apprehended a jogger near Tower Bridge who was wearing nothing but plimsolls and a British Telecom headset.
"Would we be prepared to charge him with its theft?"
"What's his name?"
"Please tell him that he was supposed to be on duty 2 hours ago!"
The Meccano Set
The time when the Senior Telecoms Superintendent requested re-terminating some circuits in another switchroom, from East to West. The object was to save time by no longer walking tickets around from one section to another and so getting the calls on quicker. Ticket running was a major and time-consuming industry in International exchanges.
"I had the engineering work done over the weekend when things were quiet and watched it like the proverbial hawk throughout Monday to see that my crazy idea was going to work. The engineer had agreed to reverse things if they went pear shaped, but all was well so I relaxed. The very next day my boss came steaming into the office saying there'd been a complaint from Canada. In fact it wasn't a complaint so much as an enquiry as to whether our new speedy transit service was going to be permanent, because up until then they had relied on it being slow to give themselves time to do their own housekeeping, ticket running, calling back customers etc."
"So I told him how I'd achieved the improvements and he went away. Next day I got a royal ticking off by letter telling me that 'I should remember that the exchange was not my own personal Meccano set to take apart and rebuild as I like'. We fell about laughing in the traffic office and I replied in writing that if I wasn't to be allowed to improve the service or the staff conditions then he could come over with his Meccano set screwdriver and take the sign off my door that said 'Exchange Manager'."
Page last updated 7th March 2012. Checked May 2021.
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