OUR story last week about Clitheroe telephone exchange called back memories for Ray Morris, who once worked there as a telephone engineer.

He contacted Looking Back from his home in Somerset to send us this photograph, right, of the retirement of fellow engineer Bert Jackson in 1956.

Between 1956 and 1965, Ray was responsible for the maintenance of seven smaller, automatic telephone exchanges around the Clitheroe area.

These were based at Dunsop Bridge, Slaidburn, Bolton-by-Bowland, Gisburn, Chatburn, Stonyhurst, and Whalley.

He later moved on to Manchester, where he planned the further development of the telephone network in the North West.

Ray told us he has written several short stories under the name Peter Pendle, relating to his experiences working on the telephones.

They include the time he called at a Ribble Valley farm to pick up a Christmas turkey for a colleague and had to wait until the farmer’s wife chose a 25lb bird, which was still pecking in the barn, killed and plucked it!

He tells of one Ribble Valley post mistress who cleaned and polished the telephone box outside her store, laid a carpet, and also added a light shade and vase of flowers; and the day engineers called in an explosives expert to blast holes for a line of poles to service an outlying farm.

In those days, whenever a fault was reported on a line, an engineer would be sent out to the property.

When an operator became concerned there was a ‘no reply’ from one old lady, an engineer was despatched and finding her at the foot of the stairs, he alerted the emergency services.

The local bus services, said Ray, often used to act as a courier service, carrying parcels from one village to another, and drivers would also pin up church notices as they passed through.

l Have you any stories to tell and photographs of life in the Ribbley Valley in the 50s and 60s?

PICTURED: At the retirement of telephone engineer Bert Jackson in 1956 are back row, from left, Horace Cook, Betty Eden, Daphne Altham, Betty Whitaker, Diane Taylor, Eileen Bleazard and Jack Gudgeon with, front, Betty Richmond, Bert Jackson and Nora Clark.