Vintage 741 Telephone fitting Tips (Part 2)

This page is a follow on from our fitting a British 741 Vintage Wall telephone . Vintage 700 series telephones such as the 741 wall telephones usually have a 3 meter long GPO telephone standard line cord. However if you are lucky or have planned ahead many people have a telephone socket near to where they have fitted their vintage wall telephone. See example below

Rather than try to cut and shorten the GPO telephone line cord by re-terminating it, we believe it is far easier and safer to pull the spare telephone cord back inside the body of the telephone. These vintage wall telephones (711 or 741) have sufficient extra space inside them to store the spare telephone cable safely. See the picture below. 

You can wrap the spare telephone line cord up neatly using an elastic band or a cable tie.

The only thing you need to be careful of is to make sure the spare telephone cable does not jam the vintage telephone switch hooks, see below for how it should look if you have done it correctly.

Then refit the vintage wall telephone case as shown in part 1 of this blog.

Fitting a 1960's or 1970's Vintage Wall Telephone (Part 1).

This is an explanation of how to physically fit, or safely remove British 1960's (model No 711) or 1970's-1980's (model 741) vintage wall telephones to a wall.



1) The fist step is to locate and unscrew (half way out) the telephone case retaining screw on the bottom of the wall telephone. See the pictures below.




2) Next carefully lift the case starting from the bottom of the telephone, as it hinges at the top (however keep the telephone case parallel to the base plate). This can be tricky if you have not done it before.

TIP: It helps if you hold the telephone switch hooks down and press gently down on the vintage telephone dial while lifting the case from the bottom. See the position of my hands in the diagram below.


3) The vintage wall phone case should now lift completely off. See diagrams of the telephone below.




4) The retaining screw for the separate metal T shaped wall fitting is a single bolt/screw at the bottom, however it is hidden behind where the curly handset cord enters the telephone. So you need to slide the telephone handset cable grommet to the right, as shown below.


5) You should now be able to unscrew the single bolt that holds the T shaped bar to the vintage telephone. As shown below.


6) The telephone is hinged a the top, so simply lift from the bottom as shown above.

7) With the T shaped bar separate fit this to your wall with the appropriate screws for the type of wall it needs to fix onto.


8) Slide the curly handset cable grommet back into its original position.

9) The 741 or 711 Telephone can then be hung onto the T bracket at the top, and the retaining bolt tightened at the bottom.


10) Refit the wall telephone case, making sure the cut out in the plastic dial surround ring is in line with the metal finger stop, see below.



Tip: Holding the switch hooks down and pressing on the dial usually makes fitting the case easier.


11) Finally tighten the case retaining screw at the bottom.


12) These instruction should help, either remove these old telephones from the wall or fit them to a new position.

Other Antique Telephone Sites

Classic 200 Series Bakelite Telephone

I am also trying to set up another Abdy Antique Telephone profile at LinkedIn about Vintage GPO Telephones. I also have a yahoo member area about Old British Bakelite Telephones .

My Hobby (first post)

As a hobby I restore and renovate old British antique phones. I have a range of these vintage / antique phones, primarily GPO (General Post Office) phones dating from the 1920's to the 1970's. I limit myself so that I only collect genuine British Telephones. I have sympathetically converted these old phones so that they will still function properly when connected to a modern BT telephone exchange line. I do not believe the conversion of these Bakelite GPO Telephones diminishes their value, because I do not remove any of the original components, I just service and adjust them and only add a small number of electrical components that can be easily removed later if needed. I also have my own antique telephone Facebook site at Old Antique & Vintage Telephones . I also convert and restore these old telephones for other people.