Today, I thought I might press the switches to see what would happen. Unexpectedly, the cabinet the switches are on was open, so I thought I'd look behind to see if maybe they weren't connected to a power supply.
This is what I saw.
That is some impressive cabling. That's the kind of cabling you see attached to switches used to turn the power of entire housing estates on and off.
I decided to leave it a while longer before biting curiosity's bullet.