On this day in Wembury — 5 January 1995

A small classified advert in the Western Evening Herald offered an “Ansaphone BT Robin, includes tape, £25”, with a Wembury telephone number beginning 0752 862… —a prefix later replaced when local exchanges were reorganised under the 01752 Plymouth code.

The Ansaphone was a popular telephone answering machine, widely used before digital voicemail became standard. The BT Robin model recorded messages on miniature cassettes and featured the reassuring whir of tape rewind when a caller hung up. Priced at £25 in 1995 , around £55–£60 today,  it represented a modest but useful household purchase for anyone wanting to catch calls while out.

The advert is a quiet snapshot of a changing communications era in Wembury: a time when homes relied on landlines, phone numbers began with “0752,” and the idea of messages waiting on an actual tape still felt pleasantly high-tech.

Source: Western Evening Herald, 5 January 1995.