Cubical Quad Antennas and Margaret's Letter

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The things you find inside a used book.

I do enjoy a good, well-thumbed, vintage book. Particularly on niche topics and often given dull titles, coupled with equally dull cover art. Don’t get me wrong, how could anyone other than Peppa Pig’s father enjoy The Wonderful World Of Concrete?

On the rare occasion however, you might just stumble in to a gem, and the gem doesn’t need to be the contents of the book. Such is the case when I recently purchased a copy of the gripping thriller, All About Cubical Quad Antennas by William I. Orr W6SAI, 3A2AF.

First published in 1969, All About Cubical Quad Antennas was such a veritable fiesta of information for the salivating radio amateur, that it did in fact command the honour of a second, revised, edition. Indeed a further edition, also titled All About Cubical Quad Antennas was published in 1982. This time co-authored by Orr.

Drier than the very driest sherry your nan might insist on supping on at Christmas. This (admittedly knowledgable and well-written) juicy Sahara of a tome is not really what I want to discuss at great length.

It’s about what I found inside it, tucked away on page 40, and the short (and potentially not very interesting to everybody) historical journey it took me on.

Margaret’s Letter.

Hidden away inside the book were an envelope and a piece of paper. The envelope had been written on with the note ‘Margaret’s Letter’ at some point in time, possibly by the same person it is addressed to, I assume Mr. F. Beamond?

Unfortunately the letter from Margaret was nowhere to be found. I presume it is lost to the sands of time, though it is nice that the envelope remains as, for the briefest of moments it took me on a bit of a fact-finding, historical journey.

We’ll come to that in a minute.

Accompanying the envelope was a yellowed piece of paper. The author, again I assume it is Mr. F. Beamond, had jotted down what appears to be the FM frequencies of transmitters or radio stations that Mr. F. Beamond was interested in, possibly BBC Radio 4 when I investigated the frequencies listed.

I thought it might have been a travel plan as on the reverse of the note he had sketched out a map, making a point to denote the location of, what I assume, was Westminster Br Station.

It didn’t occur to me initially that the map was referring to anything other than Westminster Underground Station. Then I thought about the envelope a little more and looking between the sketeched out map and the deliberate denoting of the station, I thought it might have been an overground railway station.

The plot began to thicken when I spotted that the stamp used to mail the letter was in pre-decimalisation currency. So pre-1971 when the United Kingdom was using Shillings and so on.

The stamp in question had a value of 4d. Aside from the currency I had little else to go on. I’m no expert in stamps. What to do now?

I decided to introduce a smattering of artifical intelligence to my micro-investigation. I took a photo of the stamp and ran it through an LLM which informed me that the 4d (4 Old Pence) stamp was first introduced in 1967. It was removed from circulation following decimalisation in 1971.

The stamp is a 1967 4d Queen Elizabeth II Machin. Now I had an idea of when the letter to Mr. F Beamond was sent, but I didn’t want to let it end there, I wanted to see what else I could uncover from the scant information I had to work with.

It was then that I noted the postmark, which made pains to inform the recipent of the letter about the Shrewsbury Musical and Floral Fete set to take place on the 21st and 22nd of August.

That’s great, but what year was it taking place? A quick bit of detective work led me to uncover a poster for the Shrewsbury Musical and Floral Fete that would be taking place of the weekend of August 21st to the 22nd in the year 1968. Hurrah! I could now date the envelope to somewhere between January and August of 1968. Give or take a month or so, I don’t know how long postmark campaigns would be active for so I’m going with Summer 1968 or thereabouts.

It turns out that the fete is a pretty big deal and has been a major event for over 100 years. I was particularly enthralled by some of the earlier fetes that hosted some incredible-looking hot air balloon displays.

Oddly enough, psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd played at Shrewsbury Music Hall (also recorded live for the BBC) just a handful of weeks prior to the festival held that year. I wonder if they returned and paid the fete a visit?

There was one final detail on the envelope that I had initially missed on first inspection. The sender hadn’t added a post code to the destination address on the envelope.

I was momentarily baffled. How would it have reached its final destination? Were post codes not in use long before the 1960’s? They were around for far longer than I had envisaged, having been initially trialled in Norwich.

Looking in to the history of post codes in more detail, I discovered that Shropshire did not use post codes until 1959 where they were rolled out in a phased approach from 1959 and completing in 1974.

This discovery was further evidence to help date when the letter was sent, particularly if I didn’t have the fete post mark to work with.

Bricks & Mortar Don’t Look Like What It Oughta.

Straying from my micro investigation for a moment, it is also worth mentioning the little retailer sticker I discovered on the inside front cover.

Universal Book Co, at the heart of Little Newport Street, London WC1 sounds like it was a proper little Aladdin’s cave of literature.

Imagine browsing the shelves way back in the 1960’s, at the heart of swinging central London, and happening upon a totally niche little book all about cubical quad antennas that has travelled across the Atlantic to the UK (ultimately arriving in Ireland some 60 years later too).

I love the old style four digit telephone number too. It is actually an example of the old Director Exchange telephone network which was exclusively used in London and a handful of other cities.

In London it was decomissioned and replaced in 1970, again helping to date the presence of this very book. I also discovered (see the link above) that the GERrard part of the phone number is not a mis-cased spelling of the bookshop owners name (Gerard), rather it is the Director Exchange code for Soho, a famous district in London.

All very “yeah!, groovy baby!” if you ask me!

Alas when I looked up the address in 2025, Universal Book Co is long since gone. The building remains, but is now a restaurant.

Uncovering Some Grim History

With the letter more or less fully ‘decrypted’ – I did do a search for the address on the envelope but didn’t find a great deal of information outside of Merriefields near Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire being a rather interesting-looking place to visit.

A couple of nice amateur radio Shropshire-centric items of note did turn up in my research however, both from BBC News. Firstly a story about a DXpedition in 2017 from Shropshire to Papua New Guinea in a world first for amateur radio.

Secondly a story about a HAM in Finland that was able to copy FM radio stations via Sporadic E phenomena.

I was unable to locate the exact address on a Maps search. Perhaps the location is no longer around, or I am looking in the wrong area. Perhaps someone reading this may know more? I did uncover a Super 8mm recording of Bishop’s Castle from 1973 on YouTube. Perhaps Mr. F. Beamond is in it?

Alas, we shall likely never know.

I went back to the note, made a cup of tea and sat and looked at the sketched map a bit more. Then, the lightbulb moment occurred. I held up the sketch alongside a map of the area of Westminster Bridge Station and noted a reasonable resemblance between them, making allowances for structural changes that may have occurred between 1967 and 2025.

When I conducted further research on Westminster Bridge Station, I discovered it was previously named the Necropolis Railway.

What on Earth was that all about?

It turns out that the Necropolis Railway was a railway line built in 1854 to transport the deceased from Waterloo to a cemetary in Surrey. I found a very interesting article on the Necropolis Railway network on the BBC Web site. It makes for unsettling and rather grim reading.

It made me wonder why Mr. F. Beamond would want to single this station out on his map. I don’t think it would have been for the reasons the railway line was built for as the Necropolis network was brought to a close around 1941 when the station was bombed during an overnight raid.

I guess I will never know what drew Mr. F. Beamond to Westminster Bridge Station. I hope that whatever was in Margaret’s Letter was something positive for him, and that he built and made many contacts on his Cubical Quad Antenna(s).

One thing I know for certain is I won’t be picking up and reading All About Cubical Quad Antennas in quite the same way again.

I’ve kept Mr. F. Beamond’s envelope and note as a reminder of my short, but rather interesting little investigation where I learned a lot more than just about Cubical Quad Antennas.

73.

Update:

I had another look at the handwriting on the envelope. What I initially thought read as Mr K. Balmond, I think actually reads as Mr. F. Beamond.

After conducting a search of the Shropshire Births & Deaths index, there are 3 entries for a Mr. F. Beamond, 1966, 1997 and 2004.

The entry from 1997 is particularly poignant as it lists the location of the late Mr. Beamond as Bishop’s Castle which matches the addressee on the envelope from Margaret.

I can only speculate, thus I imagine this book may have come from a silent key, finding its way in to a house clearance or a car boot sale etc some time between 1997 and 2004.

One article I happened upon, which I felt poignant enough to link here, I found using the Way Back Machine and discusses a Mr. Frank Beamond, from Bishop’s Castle, and his family of farmers.

There is mention made that the Mr. F. Beamond in the article lived to the age of 92, I am assuming in 1997, and which would point to a date of birth of 1905 and make the Mr. F. Beamond in the news story approximately 65 at the time that All About Cubical Quad Antennas was first published in 1969.

Purely speculation and delivered with the very greatest of respect of course but I felt it warranted adding as an addendum to this blog entry.

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