39. Wheaton Aston, Staffordshire. Throughout this small village, many lanterns running 80 Watt mercury vapour (MBF) lamps remained in nightly service in December 2003, with many of the lanterns fitted to 15 ft (5 m) Stanton concrete columns. By May 2004, some of the lanterns had been replaced, but it wasn't until a further visit in August 2006 that the majority of the old order had been replaced.

This Revo Prefect was located on Caspian Way, near the junction of Greenhill Lane.

A transparent bowl was fitted here - this may have been glass, given its lack of discolouration from the ultraviolet light emitted by the lamp.

By August 2006, the column had been sleeved, an a WRTL 'Lamda' 2500 was in place on the new side-entry bracket.

Slightly further along Caspian Way was this similar example.

Here, a polycarbonate bowl is seen, and the glass refractor dome remains within the lantern.

By 2006, this column had also been sleeved, and a 2500 fitted.

Back on Greenhill Lane, this 1805-type column supported a Simplex Diadem, also with a polycarbonate bowl. Later, an Urbis Altra 2 replaced the Diadem.

A bowl-less Diadem was seen on the next column. It's hard to see in these pictures, but there is a lamp-shaped mark above the lamp from years of continuous heating.

This lantern was replaced with an WRTL 2600 on a subsequent visit. The bracket has not been sleeved, but blue insulation tape has been wrapped around the end just before the lantern joins to it.

This GEC Z8591 (the forerunner of the Z8896) on Ashleigh Crescent has a 'Diakon' bowl; the plastic having discoloured to dark green over time.

 The column is starting to spall at the joint of the bracket.

This column was sleeved, and a WRTL Iris was fitted. Other nearby Z8591s were still in place at the time, however.

A rare side-entry Prefect could be seen around the corner.

Once again, column sleeving saw the Prefect replaced with a 2500.

At the other end of Caspian Way, this Prefect retained its glass refractor dome.

The sleeving work continued with this installation.

A CU Phosco P235 lantern had existed here, but had been removed by 2006.

A dayburning Z8591 was found on Broadholes Lane.

The lamp still gave out the familiar mercury colour (despite the appearance in the photographs), so cannot have been dayburning for long.

Possibly because of the dayburning fault, an Iris was fitted here when I visited the village again.

The column had been replaced completely on my second revisit; I suspect that this was due to there being damage to the concrete by the door aperture.

Ivetsey Close was home to these columns with long outreaches.

An ELECO 'Baldock' HW 853 was fitted here.

No means of switching the lantern existed in the column base, suggesting that the supply was group-controlled from elsewhere.

This column had lost its long bracket in favour of a standard outreach sleeve by the next time that I saw it.

A relatively new-looking hockey stick column on a footpath supported a Z8896.

The hockey stick was re-used when the lantern change occurred here.

One of the columns on High Street was buried particularly deeply in the grass verge.

I didn't photograph the original lantern here, but this was also a 2500 when checked later.

The entire column had been replaced on another revisit, with an Altra 2 mounted post-top being the new lantern.

Later, the Z9530 had lost its bowl, as well as all internal fixings, while the XGS gained a length of tape around its bowl.

A column with a slight lean, and cracked spigot, supported a British Thomson-Houston (BTH) Rural Enclosed. The cracking ensured that the column gained a sleeve before too much longer, with a 2600 being used as the replacement lantern, although the leaning was not corrected when this happened.

< Previous | Next >

BACK TO SURVIVORS PAGE

CLICK HERE TO MAKE A MONETARY DONATION