Telecom Street Cover & Cabinet Design Heritage

When you walk down a street, you are walking over a complicated entanglement of wires and pipes that deliver our critical utilities, one of which is the UK’s telecommunications system. It provides us with telephone and broadband services, which have become the digital age.

Much of our telecoms infrastructure is underground and that’s why many will walk down our streets without realising its existence; however, some features are visible to pedestrians and offer clues to the history of the system’s development during the last 150 years.

We aim to catalogue all the design heritage of the UK’s telecommunication system organised in the following categories:

Telecom street covers
Telecom cabinets
Telecom street markers

Telecom street covers

What is a telecom street cover?

Telecom street covers are typically manufactured from cast iron, concrete, and steel. They protect pedestrians and vehicles from falling into holes used for infrastructure access points. Access from the street is typically done in two ways:

Access underground boxes integrated in pedestrian footways.
Climb down manholes into spaces or tunnels deeper underground.

Box Joint Covers

Type – Individual
Common location – Footway
Approx dimension – 28 x 50 cm

Steel lid covering a fibreglass box, which generally contain small customer connections.

JF2 Old Style

Type – Individual
Common location – Footway
Approx dimension – 38 x 80 cm

Old style cover made of a cast iron lid case with concrete centre. Variants are from the era of the Post Office monopoly on inland telegraph systems from 1870 to its acquisition of the National Telephone Company in 1912.

JF2

Type – Individual
Common location – Footway
Approx dimension – 34 x 80 cm

Cover made from concrete with cast iron lid case frame and marking plate.

Large rectangular covers

JF4 Old Style

Type – Individual
Common location – Footway
Approx dimension – 55 x 100 cm

JF4

Type – Individual
Common location – Footway
Approx dimension – 55 x 100 cm

Cover made from concrete with cast iron lid case frame. Earlier models contain a cast iron marking plate with later models using plastic. Some covers were replaced with models containing lid casings made from steel bar tread.

JF11

Type – Triplet
Common location – Footway
Approx dimension – 140 x 47 cm

Cover made from concrete with cast iron lid frame and marking plate.

CW No. 3 Elkington

Type – Pair & Triplet
Common location – Footway & Carriageway

Old style cover made of a cast iron frame with concrete centres and D-shaped keys.

CW No. 3 Silent Night

Type – Triplet
Common location – Carriageway

Cover made of steel with T-shaped keys covering fibreglass boxes.

Square covers

CW No. 1 Silent Night

Type – Individual
Common location – Carriageway
Approx dimension – 68 x 68 cm

Made of a cast iron, one of the few designs that is not a quadrilateral polygon.

JF5

Type – Individual
Common location – Carriageway
Approx dimension – 68 x 68 cm

Made of a cast iron frame and marking plate with concrete centre containing lattice setting pattern. Covers a manhole.

JF6 Old Style

Type – Pair
Common location – Footway
Approx dimension – 70 x 70 cm

JF10

Type – Triplet
Common location – Footway
Approx dimension – 80 x 80 cm

Made of a cast iron frame and marking plate with concrete centre.

Telecom cabinet designs

What is a telecom street cover?

Telecom cabinets are commonly painted dark green. They contain incoming telephone cables from the exchange and act as a control panel for all outgoing cables that run to customer distribution points. These cabinets are referred to as Primary connection Points (PCP).

Early models were made out of cast iron with panelled doors. Some cast iron cabinets contain replacement doors made of steel. Later models were made from fibreglass. All cabinets use triangular Openreach keys arranged in duets or quartets.

Cross Connection No. 1