113DI. Various locations, Clipston, Northamptonshire With thanks to Dwight for informing me of these Survivors. Installed throughout this village are a number of lanterns that continued to run mercury vapour (MBF) lamps in May 2024, with the majority of these lanterns being of the AC Ford AC 850 variety, although ELECO HW-918s are to be seen too.
Many of the columns in the village are fluted cast iron types, which may signify that they ran gas lanterns originally. This example is on Church Close.
The swan neck bracket is an AC Ford product too, although it may be older than the AC 850 supporting it is - much of the tooling and casting moulds used by AC Ford were little changed in decades.
What looks to be a relatively recently replaced Zodion photocell controls the lantern's operation.
This column is on the High Street. Along with a bracket indicating the direction of the Village Hall, all of the cast iron columns in the village have a smaller bracket affixed to their shafts, which may be used for supporting hanging baskets during the summer months.
The central positioning of the photocell on this AC 850 is unusual - as with the example seen above, they tend to be placed at the front of the lantern, owing to the positioning of the internal lamp control gear.
This older swan neck is made by Revo - I assume that it would have carried the usual top-entry finial originally, which was lost when the present side-entry lantern was installed.
Although not obvious in this image, the swan neck bracket fitted to this column on Bassett Way was misaligned, and had a pronounced lean to it.
As is typical, the combination of the mercury lamp, and sunlight generally, has caused the polycarbonate bowl to discolour over the years.
The slightly newer Weskers Close features two Concrete Utilities 'Estate Minor X' columns and 'Arc 3' top-entry brackets, both of which support AC 888 lanterns.
The bowl design seen here is unusual - it doesn't appear to feature any refractor prisms that the AC Ford lanterns have normally.
The inspection door has slipped downwards slightly, leaving a slight gap above it. As the door is also secured using a stainless steel Tespa band, the "drop-latch" lock that was an oddity of Concrete Utilities' columns is likely to have failed.
The second installation is situated at the end of the cul-de-sac. A middle column position on the road was a newer 5 m tubular steel type, which may have been a replacement for another concrete column, or a later addition.
The photocell here is a Royce Thompson Oasis 1000, probably from the mid-2000s.
Peering up at the underside of the lantern reveals that there are, in fact, refractor prisms moulded into the bowl, but they are not as pronounced as they are on later versions.
This HW-918 mounted to a 5 m hockey stick column was observed operating in daylight when pictured.
The greenish glow from within the bowl confirms that the lantern is running an MBF lamp. The detector for a Royce Thompson P42 photocell is visible on the canopy.
The reason for the dayburning soon became clear - the relay installed in the column base is an ER4N type, which is not compatible with the P42-style detector. Presumably, this means that the lantern has been lit constantly since this relay was installed (and probably before that, if the previous relay was actually faulty) - I assume that the electrician carrying out the work hadn't appreciated that mercury lamps cannot re-strike immediately after being deactivated temporarily, and had thought that because the lantern wasn't lit after the relay was changed, doing this had resolved the fault.
The date code 'LF' on the GEC-made ballast suggests that it was manufactured in June 1979, which would be accurate for the age of the installation.
A final AC 850, once again attached to a cast iron column, was to be found on Peg's Lane.
This example features the rarer glass bowl, instead of the usual polycarbonate.
The underside of the bowl is cracked, but is otherwise in good condition.
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