173AB. Green Hill London Road / St Dunstan's Crescent / Battenhall Place, Worcester With thanks to Dwight for informing me of these Survivors. Installed throughout these three roads are a number of 15 ft (5 m) cast iron columns resembling the Revo 'Moseley' design, and topped with an AC Ford swan neck bracket and AC730 lantern. I suspect that the columns were refurbished in the 1980s, with the AC Ford equipment dating from then, and replacing older brackets and lanterns. All of the AC730s run 70 Watt high pressure sodium (SON) lamps, and whilst the type fitted now are all of the tubular variety, when new, the lanterns probably ran elliptical lamps instead, owing to their limited optical capabilities.

This is one of the Green Hill London Road examples.

The top sections of the columns are more ornate than they are on the standard Moseley, and the ladder bars have an unusual feature - more on this later!

This AC730 was dayburning at the time of photographing. The paint on this column is in particularly bad condition, with an earlier coat of grey paint (possibly, a primer) becoming visible.

All of the lanterns have Royce Thompson P42 photocell detectors positioned on the sides of their canopies. These are likely to be the means for switching the lantern at dusk and dawn since their introduction.

This correctly-operating example is on St Dunstan's Crescent itself.

Thanks to the use of SON lamps, the polycarbonate lantern bowls are far less discoloured than they would be if mercury vapour (MBF) lamps were used.

The tip of the SON-T lamp is visible in the underside of the bowl.

The installations continue to a slightly newer part of the road (evidenced by the change in design of the surrounding properties)

The paint finish has flaked slightly from this lantern.

The original inspection door on this column was missing, and an ill-fitting 'universal' steel door had been used as a replacement.

This style of bowl was also used on contemporary Thorn Beta 4 lanterns.

One of this column's ladder bars was broken.

Peering through the gap at the top of the door revealed a 1980s' Smart & Brown 53320/T ballast (identical to equivalent Thorn-branded products of the era) alongside the P42 relay unit. Out of sight, further down the column base, was a replacement ignitor.

Doing my civic duty, I decided, very gallantly, to check that the replacement ignitor was wired correctly, and that the lantern worked, and positioned the switch on the front of the relay in the 'test' position. Thankfully, the lamp struck, and warmed up to the familiar SON colour within a few minutes.

History repeats itself as the column at the end of the road gained a new swan neck bracket and lantern at some point after August 2022.

The new lantern is a Pudsey Diamond 'Orwell', using the 'Soft COB' LED option.

This setup may have been created as a trial for renewing the other lights along here in future.

A small baffle plate behind the LED array prevents potential nuisance light trespass from the rear of the lantern - something that the AC730s would not be able to achieve without having portions of their bowls painted black.

Battenhall Place has a shorter (possibly 10 ft / 3 m) version of the column installed.

The swan neck here is more elaborate in design, and may be the type that the other columns used originally.

The column demonstrates the aforementioned special feature of the ladder bars - they are hinged, and can fold upwards, although how they could be brought down, or returned to, this position without a ladder being used is a mystery!

Also on here is a more traditional fluted cast iron column with fixed ladder bars.

This is topped with a lantern from GEC's Z5730 range - the exact part code being determined by whatever lamp is fitted.

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