Electric power comes to Juniper Green

Electrician George Byers in his shop on Lanark Road in October 2006

The electricity cable to Juniper Green was laid up the main road probably some time in the early 1920s. It was DC at first: AC came later. There is evidence of houses being connected to the electricity in 1938 with a little book in which the meter readings were recorded for a house in Juniper Avenue. That house used no more than forty units in its first four months' connection. Often the first connection was by a single 5 amp line which would have allowed for lighting, an iron perhaps and (during the war) the all-important radio.

The original meter card from a house in Juniper Green before the Second World War

A well-to-do household might have had a 15 amp socket but many houses in Juniper Green were rented from the mill or from private landlords who were unwilling to pay for the changes. One house that did have electricity installed in 1933 was St Helens (495 Lanark Road) and its next door neighbour Orwell Lodge (493 Lanark Road) had electricity from 1925. Information on connections in Juniper Green has been supplied by Scottish Power and the author acknowledges their help in the detail in this article.

Electricity was installed at the house St Helens on Lanark Road in 1933

Other houses did not connect until after the Second World War but by then there was an energy crisis so the government was urging people to use less power.

People were often keen to change from gaslight which was dangerous, required fragile mantles, left sooty stains on the ceiling and needed matches to light it. To have the electric light at the flick of a switch was brilliant! But many people kept their gas rings.

The street lighting was gas before the war with Leerie going round to light each lamp. He lived in the village. Later there was a timing mechanism which allowed each lamp to light itself from a pilot light. However Leerie still needed to adjust these mechanisms, putting his ladder against the little cross bar on the light and climbing up to each one. During the war blackout of course there was no street lighting.

The paper mills at first used the electricity mainly for lighting. But soon they found they wanted AC to give them the power for starting up the big machines. During the war Woodhall paper mill took a big cable from Lanark road down to the mill on the river through where the garden centre at the far West of the village used to be. Because of the war some corners were cut where safety was concerned and the cable was sheathed in lead (not the correct procedure) and so was not readily identifiable as electric. It seems that electric lighting along the main Lanark Road did not come to Juniper Green until after the Second World War.