ELECTRICITY

It is perhaps bizarre that in the middle of Spalding down the road from the house I was raised in, in Stonegate was a house that relied entirely on gas for it had no electricity until the 21^st century. In it lived Edna Basam and her elderly mother when I was young and they had gas lamps on the walls for lighting. I remember asking them what they were as I hadn’t seen gaslight before and Edna lit one to show me.#

The electricity grid to supply the whole country with electric did not start to form until after the 1926 Electricity Act. Prior to this time electricity was supplied by local action with early developments in London and Newcastle. In Northumberland the industrialist William Armstrong installed the first hydroelectric generation system to light his house in Cragside near Rothbury in 1870. Such forward thinking was however limited and whilst Britain developed many electrical innovations many of these were exported and used at a faster rate abroad than here in Britain. By 1933 70% of German households had electricity and 90% of rural areas were connected. In Britain it was only 60% of households with less than 50% of rural areas. In America, considering it is a much larger country, the figures were very similar, but post 1936 the pace of rural electrification stepped up to 90% by 1942.

The design of the UK electrical grid has proven to be more robust than many other countries, but, as seen in the Fens of South Lincolnshire, rural areas were left behind until 1952 when many rural villages went onto electricity for the first time.

It is a historic failing that sounds familiar today that the following words from 1929 were not matched fully by actions for 23years: “It is no more a Utopian dream to imagine that it should go a long way to reviving the villages and agricultural areas of Lincolnshire, lead to the creation of new industries and bring the farms up to date. It may also do much to rid us of smoke pollution. When electricity is everywhere there will be no more need to fear the uglification of the countryside by the erection of factory chimneys, though we are in doubt about the beauty of the transmission lines and standards. The immediate importance of the scheme, however, lies in the stimulus it should give to trafe revival.”[1]

It did give trade a revival, but for many rural areas and Lincolnshire villages it wasn’t until the 1950’s. One trade it did stimulate was the sale of electrical goods and my grandfather exploited the need for households connected to electricity for the first time to buy their goods from him. In June 1952 as Weston Hills went onto the grid he had an exhibition to introduce people to modern electrical goods gaining customers that remained loyal for many decades.

[1] Lincolnshire Echoe 22.5.29