Local Thorn Celests

Thorn's slim Celest 55 Watt compact fluorescent lantern became Derbyshire Street Lighting's maintenance lantern for all 6 m columns requiring a replacement lantern in the early 2010s; taking over from the 70 Watt SON WRTL Arc lantern. Its use continued until LED lanterns began to be used instead, in the mid-2010s.

This first Celest is on Burton Road in Repton; prior to its installation, an ELECO GR 501 55 Watt SOX lantern was fitted. This was removed, along with its outreach bracket, in late 2013, after the ELECO lantern was reported to have lost its bowl.

This second example, located on Findern Lane in Willington, is one of three that were installed in early 2014 as replacements for Stanton 1805-type concrete columns that had been sleeved in the 1990s, in order to increase their overall heights to 6 m. All three of the old columns ended their days running Philips MI 36 55 Watt SOX lanterns.

An all-night Zodion SS6 35 Lux photocell is employed here.

Several Celests were installed on Bath Street, Ilkeston in late 2013 as temporary replacements for failed D.W. Windsor 'Victoria' globe lanterns. These temporary lanterns were, themselves, replaced with Phosco P111 post-top lanterns in late 2014.

The heritage columns have 89 mm diameter shafts; in order to accommodate the Celest lanterns, adaptors that reduce the spigot diameter to 76 mm have been fitted.

Some neighbouring streets that also featured defective D.W. Windsor lanterns were given the Celest treatment; this is Providence Place:

Compare this view of the Celest to the Bath Street example - notice that there are three clips on this side of the bowl compared to the two clips on the other side; I didn't until putting these pictures together!

The village of Ticknall saw several Celests replacing failed Thorn Beta 79 lanterns in 2014.

As the new lanterns are fitted to the existing brackets, they somewhat resemble main road SOX installations.

The natural lantern tilt is very obvious with this style of bracket.

The next installation bore a slightly 'Continental' appearance.

The 55 Watt lamp fills the length of the bowl area.

This example is located adjacent the Grade II listed bridge that carried the Ticknall Tramway between 1802 and 1915. This form of connection to local limeyards and brickworks was preferable to extending the Ashby Canal to this area on the grounds of cost; the tramway joining up with the canal at Willesley Basin in present-day Leicestershire.

The bracket featured a slight up-tilt, along with longer webbing than was seen on the first example.

This column on the outskirts of Melbourne has also been retro-fitted with a Celest. The previous lantern here was also a GR 501.

An SS9-DLS part-night photocell is also fitted here. In fact, the fact that this is now a part-night installation could be why the lantern was changed - the GR 501 is remotely-geared, and whilst the Local Authority did originally convert such lanterns to part-night operation using the miniature version of the SS9-DLS photocell (the SS19-DLS), problems with shared neutrals on some ballasts saw the decision taken to fit integrally-geared lanterns in these scenarios. The issue didn't exist when the lanterns operated all night, as they then ran on two-part photocells.

A Celest has been retro-fitted to this 6 m hockey stick column in Chesterfield.

The appearance of the installation with this lantern fitted puts me in mind of installations seen in Continental Europe; specifically, in parts of Germany. Following LED replacements, this lantern entered my collection in January 2018; photographs can be seen here.