It is hard to imagine what life must have been like before electricity brought the benefits of modern-day living.

Electric lighting, fridges, washing machines, televisions and computers are but a handful of appliances and accessories that we take for granted at the flick of a switch.

Towns and cities had begun generating electricity at the end of the 19th century.

Keighley Corporation built a generating plant in Coney Lane in 1899 and lit the first electric street lamps in 1901.

Skipton applied to the Board of Trade in 1901 to generate its own electricity and although initially granted, permission was revoked a few months later.

Government policy had changed and instead of granting permission to localised urban areas, it was decided to create large companies to distribute electricity nationwide. For distribution in Yorkshire, the Yorkshire Electric Power Company was established in 1902.

Two Skipton electrical contractors, John Banks and James Herbert Oxley, were to play an important – but now forgotten – role in bringing electricity to the Keighley area, South Craven and beyond.

John Banks – a former engineer with the National Telephone Company – began business in Skipton in 1907 installing telephones, fire alarms, electric motors and lighting. He was joined by Herbert Oxley, an apprentice-trained electrician, in 1913.

Trading as the Craven & District Private Telephone & Electric Company, they moved from small private work to major electrical distribution.

In 1919 they won a contract with the Keighley Electrical Department to take mains electricity to Haworth. Underground cable was run from Coney Lane to Ingrow. The cable trench was dug by gangs of labourers, each of whom were required to dig 30 feet of trench, and back fill it, each day.

From Ingrow the line was taken overhead up the Worth Valley. Poles were conveniently dropped off along the route by the Midland Railway and dragged into position and erected by hand with ropes and props. As the network developed, Oakworth and Oxenhope also came online.

Electricity finally came to Skipton in 1923 and the Craven company undertook the contract work on behalf of the Yorkshire Electric Power Company. The line ran overhead along the Aire Valley from Keighley and power was formally switched on in Skipton at a small ceremony on September 12, 1923. Over the following ten years the villages in South Craven came online.

In 1926 Herbert Oxley and John Banks parted company. Herbert moved to Keighley and set-up a new business, trading as Transmission Lines & Cables Construction Company. His offices were in the National Westminster Bank Chambers in North Street and his pole yard and storage room in the Midland Railway Goods Yard.

The company electrified towns and villages throughout Yorkshire, the Midlands and Wales, along the south coast and in the London area. They erected some of the tallest wooden poles in the country for the London Metropolitan Electricity Company. The cedar poles were so long they had to be floated up the Thames and when erected stood 90 feet tall. Hand winches and occasionally teams of heavy horses were used to erect large poles and masts.

The biggest contract undertaken by this small Keighley firm was for the electrification of the Republic of Ireland under the Shannon Hydro Electric Scheme in the early 1930s.

They worked as subcontractors to Callendar’s Cable & Construction Company, who had won the main contract. Engineers from Keighley worked for several years in Ireland and are said to have electrified over 50 towns and villages.

During the Second World War, the company worked on Government contracts electrifying airfields in East and North Yorkshire.

Herbert Oxley retired from business at the end of the Second World War. However, the Craven and District Private Telephone & Electric Company continued as a presence in Skipton into the 1970s.