Jinx,

On Tue, 19 Sep 2006 18:42:59 +1200, Jinx wrote:

> When I used to tramp around English stately homes, what
> used to interest me were not the cavernous baronial dining
> rooms or grand halls or galleries but the pokey out-of-the-
> way places like towers and follies

Me too!  And low-tech equipment like dumb-waiters (manually-operated lifts for taking the food from the kitchen in the basements up to the dining 
room above).  I had the good luck to live in a house that was built in 1837, which had one of these, and under the floors you could find the remains of 
the mechanical bell-pull system for calling the servants from the basement to the living- and bedrooms.  That's when I realised why a "bell crank" 
was so called!  :-)  Sadly the bells on curly springs had all gone, but you could see where they had been mounted high on the basement wall.

The mechanical system had been replaced by an electrical one at some point, with a display showing where the call originated that used a solenoid 
for each call button, which attracted a pendulum while the button was pressed, which then swung for some time afterwards.  

The house had loads of nooks and crannies to explore, the like of which just aren't included in houses these days.

Sadly the house has now gone, replaced by a block of characterless flats :-(

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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