107a. West Street / High Street / Pinfold Street / Church Street, Eckington Throughout the length of the B6056 as it passes through this North East Derbyshire town are a number of 25 ft (8 m) Stewart & Lloyd tubular steel columns that supported ELECO HW-745 90 Watt SOX lanterns until 2021, when LED lanterns were fitted instead. The abundance of these lanterns along this road, which started with the examples seen on the previous page, suggests that all of the installations were of about the same age, and were likely to have formed part of a 1960s' relighting scheme.
Many of the installations are very similar in appearance, with a slightly cranked bracket topping the column. This particular example has had additional bracketry added, in order to accommodate a banner advertisement.
The Perspex bowls fitted have become translucent over time, owing to UV degradation from the sun.
The majority of the column bases are in (almost) original condition, with the Philips L4140 leak transformers soldiering on into the 21st Century. The leak transformers carry the manufacturing date code 'C5', which represents March 1965. The only alteration made to the original wiring is the addition of a two-part photocell (in this case, a Zodion SS55), replacing the time switch control that would have operated the lantern formerly.
Two consecutive examples are pictured below.
Sadly, the bowl fitted to the foreground lantern is damaged.
The background lantern appears to have fared better.
Zooming in on the lantern allows the ELECO logo to be seen in the centre of the fitting's canopy.
A shorter outreach bracket is employed at the locations where the column is installed within a narrower footway.
This bowl has suffered damage too. A Zodion SS54 detector is seen here.
The leak transformers make no reference to SOX lamps at all, despite the advent of this lamp in 1964. Instead, they are intended to run 140 Watt SO/H and SOI/H lamps, which were the forerunners of (what became) the 90 Watt SOX lamp, and are electrically-identical.
A return to longer outreach brackets near the (rather intriguingly-named) Penny Engine Lane junction.
Again, the fragile Perspex bowl had suffered damage.
The steeple of Church Street's eponymous building is prominent in the background of this picture.
Thankfully, this lantern's bowl is undamaged, and, as a result, appears to be relatively free of gathered debris.
The next installation was in much the same condition.
The bowl is not attached directly to the lantern; instead, it slots into an aluminium support ring, which is securely with two clips mounted on the side of the lantern.
The paint finish to this column was in slightly poorer condition, probably from the adjacent conifer tree branches rubbing against it over the years.
The Perspex may be thinner on the undersides of the bowls; hence, the number of bowls seen where there is damage around this area.
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