Bangor Telephone Exchange, beside 77 Southwell Road, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 3AE

Bangor Telephone Exchange, Southwell Road

This is a Neo-Classical telephone exchange built in 1933 to designs by Richard Ingleby Smith, Chief Architect of the Works Department of the Ministry of Finance. It is a good example of the Ministry's architectural output during the 1930s and one of few surviving buildings of this era and style. It is historically significant for what it represents in the development of Bangor's telecommunications infrastructure: the town's first exchange was established in 1906 at no. 7 Southwell Road by the National Telephone Company, taken over by Post Office Telephones in 1912, and replaced by this building further along the same street in 1933. The building was enlarged in the early 1950s with a substantial rear extension, and a modern exchange was added to the north around 1973.

The building shares a broadly similar architectural idiom — particularly its rusticated red brick — with two nearby buildings of the same decade on Main Street: the Post Office (designed by T. F. O. Rippingham of the Ministry of Finance, 1936) and the Belfast Co-Operative Society building (1935–37, by Millar and Symes).

The exchange comprises a 1930s three-storey front section and return, aligned north-east to south-west with its principal façade facing directly onto the east side of Southwell Road. Behind this sits a larger 1950s four-storey block over a semi-basement, and the modern exchange lies to the north. Both sections have flat reinforced-concrete roofs with concrete-coped brick parapets; gutters along the inner faces of the parapets discharge into external cast-iron downpipes. Unless otherwise noted, all walls are of rusticated machined red brick, all openings have flat heads, doors are of timber, and all window openings contain metal-framed casements with concrete heads and cills.

Front Section (1930s)

The front section is three storeys high and five openings wide. Its façade is symmetrically arranged except for the entrance doorway at ground floor right. The ground floor is faced with ashlar Ballycullen sandstone — the sandstone being quarried locally in County Down — over a slightly projecting base course and beneath a deep platband, both also of ashlar sandstone. At the right is a double-leaf panelled door with a rectangular overlight (now sheeted over), set in pilastered ashlar jambs with a moulded sandstone cornice over. The four regularly spaced windows to its left are also sheeted over, though their 3×3-paned frames survive internally; they have cut sandstone cills.

At first floor level there are five regularly spaced 2×4-paned window openings, aligned with those below, with decorative voussoired brick heads and a shared common concrete cill course. The middle and two end openings are set within semicircular-headed recesses with moulded concrete imposts. The remaining two openings are flush with the face of the wall and are each surmounted by a patterned concrete frieze with moulded cornice; above each frieze is a rectangular dressed sandstone plaque bearing a bas-relief carving of a ringing telephone.

The top floor has five regularly spaced window openings of diminished height containing 3×3 windows, also with voussoired heads and concrete cills. A flagpole projects from beneath the middle window. A deep concrete frieze with bas-relief circles runs across the tops of the windows, with a moulded concrete cornice between it and the parapet above; the top of this cornice is coped with ashlar sandstone.

At the right-hand end of the frontage is a pair of ashlar sandstone gate piers giving access to a passage along the south side of the building. The original gates have been replaced with steel palisade-type gates. The gate piers at the left end of the frontage are no longer present (a newspaper photograph taken on the opening day in 1933 shows ashlar gateways at both ends).

The north elevation of the front section projects slightly from the rest of that elevation and carries the same detailing as the façade — the platband, cill course, frieze and cornice all wrap around — with the one difference that the ground floor brickwork here has a smooth rather than rusticated face. The ground floor has two 3×3 windows and a double-leaf semi-glazed door, now disused. The right-hand end of the upper floors is abutted by a concrete-block connecting link to the adjacent 1970s exchange, with internal doorway insertions at all floors. The exposed section of the first floor has a 2×4 window set within a semicircular recess with moulded concrete imposts, and a 3×3 window at the top floor. A linking corridor from the modern exchange runs across the top of this elevation to connect with the top floor of the rear part of the building, with a window at its left end.

The south elevation of the front section is similarly detailed to the front façade and is also slightly advanced. Again, the ground floor brickwork is smooth rather than rusticated. There is a 1×3 window at ground floor (with a sandstone head) and a 2×2 window at each of the upper floors, both with voussoired heads and flush with the wall.

Front Section Return (1930s)

The original return to the front section is clearly distinguishable immediately to the right of the south elevation of the front bay. It rises to the same height as the three-storey front section but contains four floors internally. It is of plain rather than rusticated brick. At ground floor there is a semi-glazed single-leaf door with rectangular overlight and three windows (1×2, 1×2 and 1×3). At first floor level there are three 4×4 windows sharing a common head. The top two floors each have seven 2×3 windows, all with a common head and common cills.

Rear Block (1950s)

The exchange was enlarged in the early 1950s with a four-storey extension visible on the north, east and south sides. On each floor of the north elevation is a double-leaf semi-glazed door with a rectangular 1×3-paned overlight. The upper loading doors have cantilevered concrete balconies, and mounted on the parapet directly above them is a projecting jib for an electric hoist. To the right of the doors at ground floor level are four brick-infilled window openings, one of which has an air vent projecting from it; whether these were blocked from the outset is uncertain. Each of the upper floors has a row of three contiguous 4×3-paned windows with a common head and cill, and a 2×2 window at the right.

The east elevation of the extension is largely devoid of openings, save for a small vent at ground floor right and a shuttered fire escape opening on the first floor, also at the right-hand end. The left end of this wall steps up to the pipe tower at the south-east corner of the building.

On the south elevation, each of the four floors has a row of contiguous windows; reading left to right, the fenestration is 2×3, 4×3, 4×3 and 3×3, all with common heads and cills. At ground level an external concrete stairway leads to a doorway into the semi-basement, which is lit by windows identical to those above; the stairway is enclosed within a steel wire cage. At the right-hand end of this elevation, an opening-free pipe tower rises above the roofline.

Historical Notes

Bangor's first telephone exchange opened in 1906 at no. 7 Southwell Road under the National Telephone Company. Following its transfer to Post Office Telephones in 1912, a replacement was commissioned from the Ministry of Finance's Works Department, and this building was the result. It was officially opened on 6 January 1933 by the Mayor of Bangor, Councillor Walter Malcolm JP, who made a ceremonial telephone call to the Postmaster General, Sir Kingsley Wood, in London. Isaac Copeland, representing the contractors, presented the Mayor with a souvenir gold key. At the time of opening, the exchange could handle up to 2,400 subscribers but had only 712 users; because of this under-use it was considered more cost-effective to operate it as a manual exchange rather than install automated equipment, with switchboard operators stationed on the top floor. Originally the building comprised only the three-storey front section and return, as shown on the 1939 Ordnance Survey maps. By 1960 the entire block, including the rear extension, was shown in its present form. No information on the exchange survives in the Ministry of Finance records held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. The much larger exchange adjoining to the north dates from approximately 1973. Today, apart from a small bank of equipment on the first floor of the front block, all of Bangor's British Telecom telephone traffic is handled by the adjoining exchange.

Setting

The building stands on the east side of Southwell Road in a residential area. To the west are two-and-a-half storey terraced dwellings; to the south are three and two-and-a-half storey terraced dwellings; to the north is the 1970s telephone exchange; and to the rear is a steep bank with a car park beyond.