12H. Kingswood Road, London Borough of Merton, London. Located on a small roundabout at the junctions of Kingswood Road, Wilton Grove, Wilton Crescent and Sherwood Road is a tall steel pole supporting two Group 'AL' Bi-Multi ESLA directional lanterns on rather plain outreach brackets. The two lanterns that were selected when this road was built in the 1930s would have been chosen as the most suitable types for lighting the junction mouths of the four roads (and public footpath) that terminate at the roundabout; thus, one of the lanterns (lighting Wilton Grove and Wilton Crescent) is a two-way design, and the other (lighting Kingswood Road, Sherwood Road and the footpath) is a three-way design. Both feature quite sharp directional angles, owing to the equally sharp angles of the junction approaches. Fellow collector Simon Cornwell features this installation on his website; however, since the pictures there were taken, the conduit attached to the outside of the pole, along with the fuse box, have been removed, suggesting that the installation is no longer operational. It may have been retained in a non-operational state, owing to the roads being situated within a Conservation Area.
As well as supporting the brackets for the two lanterns, signs indicating the directions of three of the roads are installed too.
The three-way lantern retains a tungsten filament (GLS) lamp. Sadly, the silver coating applied to the rear of the mirrored facets has become damp over the years, wearing portions of the coating away.
A Philips SL*25 compact fluorescent lantern is fitted in the two-way lantern.
Thanks to the very specific angles of these lanterns, the installation looks different when viewed from different positions.
The pole may have been intended for use for supporting the overhead conductors for trolleybuses - it has an ornate base and embellishment collar above the lantern brackets, but then ends without any sort of finial or top cap.
Although the installation is possibly no longer operational, its maintenance number remains on the pole's shaft.
This is how the installation appears when viewed from the connection to the public footpath.
From this view, the back of the two-way lantern is seen, and the front of the three-way.
An assortment of couplers allow the lanterns to attach to the brackets.
Traces of an earlier green paint finish are visible beneath the current black paint. The green paint was applied at some point after 2008 - back then, the installation was still painted white, with a black base - the preferred colour combination for Merton's older lighting units.
The GLS lamp is 'modern', as seen by its 60 mm diameter envelope. In all likelihood, this will site the filament too far up in the lantern for the beam to be focused correctly.
When viewing the installation from Kingswood Road, the lantern angles are seen to line up fairly accurately with the locations of the junctions.
With every extra direction added to an ESLA lantern, the less intense the overall beam would become, as the number of mirrors surrounding the lamp decreased.
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