On Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:50:29 +0100, "cj" wrote:

Hi
Reminds me of the 'Bardsley' boxes a well known NW builder used 38mm waste
in a chocolate brown .It was custom made for them deliberately (i am told)
to stop other plumbers doing repairs or nickin' it from site.

"Bardsley" boxes reminds _me_ of "Bardic" boxes which were a cast
aluminium/alloy cavity wall box designed to fit flush into the outer
leaf of a cavity wall.
They are (were?) widely used in the telephony/CATV field to house
interfaces (blocks terminal or CATV taps (or even UHF distribution
amplifiers!)) between external PE cable and internal PVC/LSOH cables.

Typically they were about a brick and a half in length and 3 bricks
high. The gubbins were simply stuffed (carefully!) into the
box/cavity.
I'm sure that nowadays they'll be totally banned (by the EU) on
account of the heat loss in that bit of cavity wall...

--
Frank Erskine