My father looked after the electric light installations, the generator and in addition he
looked after the cars. At Pendrell they had electric light before anyone else in Codsall.
When Mr Gaskell went to live there in 1910 he wanted electricity installed. At that time my father worked at Bellis & Morcom in Birmingham. Mr Gaskell knew one of the managers there and asked if he had anyone able to do the work. My father was asked and
took the job.
He was probably attracted to it because it was in the country, as my father was a country-bred man from Worcestershire. Of course many people had to leave the country and go into the towns in order to find work. My father was about 29 when, having got married, he took up this new position. Another attraction was that a house went with the job. It was a good house too for those days. It was built in 1910 and very well built too, with cavity walls. There was indoor sanitation and electric light. There were not many people who had those in 1910. There were three bedrooms. The two largest had a walk-in cupboard with hanging space. There were two good living rooms, a kitchen, a scullery, a toilet and a coal house out at the back � all under cover.
There was no bathroom upstairs but downstairs in the scullery there was a 'tip-up' bath. It was lowered from a cupboard on bath night. The hot water came from the boiler behind the fire and we put a hose on the tap to fill the bath; if there was no hot water we had to heat the water in the copper and carry it to the bath in buckets. When the plug was pulled the water emptied straight into the drain.
The electricity was supplied from the engine room at Garage Cottage. The engine room looked like a sweet little cottage, with leaded windows and a turret. It had the Battery Room upstairs, where the batteries were stored in three to four rows of glass containers. The engine room was underneath. Inside there was the switch board. About six o'clock every night my father would go in to put a switch down to improve the power for the evening. This was known as 'switching up'. Besides the Hall, power was also supplied to my father's house, the Lodge and the Coachman's cottage. It was at least 1925 before power came to Codsall from the main electricity supply. A few years later the power generator was scrapped and the district power was used. In 1918 Mr Gaskell decided to have an improved engine for power. I remember the day they changed it over. They ran the engine out and there were men in the kitchen watching the light. As soon as it went
out they rushed to change over to the new system.
A man called O'Brian was in charge and he had to stay at our house whilst all this was going on Pendrell Hall and the three cottages had their own sewer system. There's a sewer bed at the back of Wheatstone. It had probably taken in Wheatstone too. The Carr family lived at Wheatstone. Mr Carr ran the Wolverhampton Steam Laundry and they were connected with the biscuit people of Carlisle. Mrs Carr was related to Shackleton, the explorer. I think she was his sister. Roger Carr lived in Codsall House later.
When the deep sewer came to Codsall they put it along Wood Road and then detoured across the fields to this old sewer bed, to join the private sewer.
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