Trumpy,
I've seen "Octopus" wiring once, at least I think that was what it was.
The house was built in 1960 and when I rewired it (1999) I found a large metal JB under the 1st floor landing with power & lighting cables in it. The cables were TRS (tough rubber sheathed), lighting cables unearthed, as was common in that era.
Cables (labelled) radiated from this box to each switch & light on the ground floor, also to power points on 1st floor (I think that corrupted the ring main, but i'm not going down that thread again!) , bathroom heater & shaver point.
The real shocker was you needed to pull 3 fuses to isolate this JB.
Not a great system in my opinion.
Incidentally in this part of the world, when we use a JB system for lighting (normally only on rewires nowadays) we tend to take most of the cables for each circuit to 1 central adaptable box. Individual JB's for each light & switch are not the norm.
