197N. Wordsworth Road / Windsor Avenue, Little Hulton, Salford, Greater Manchester With thanks to Dwight for informing me of these Survivors. Installed on these two roads are 15 ft (5 m) Stanton 7-type concrete columns that have, as of December 2024, managed to avoid being converted to accommodate an LED lantern, let alone lose their original curved brackets to sleeving works. The example on Wordsworth Road may even retain its (possibly) original GEC Z9496 lantern, for a 60 Watt SLI/H (linear low pressure sodium) or 85 Watt SO/H / SOI/H, and 40 - 60 (later 35 - 55) Watt SOX (single-ended low pressure sodium) lamps, although the lantern is in poor condition. The two examples on Windsor Avenue now run Philips MI 51s, designed for 35 Watt SOX lamps, but now running LED retro-fit lamps instead.
The Wordsworth Road Z9496 is covered first.
The Z9496 is the rather bizarre looking top-entry version of the Z9484. The offset nature of this lantern's attachment to the bracket creates a rather strange appearance. Practically, I am not even certain of how this lantern would have been accommodated on such a low radius bracket in the first place.
The Perspex bowl is damaged, and to add insult to injury, it has had to be taped to the lantern canopy. A NEMA photocell socket has been added at some point in the lantern's life, with a Zodion cell seen fitted here.
With the bowl plastic having become translucent through age, trying to discern whether a lamp still remains in this sorry-looking lantern is not easy, although I think that there may be an LED retro-fit lamp installed here too.
The first of the two Stanton 7 columns supporting MI 51s on Windsor Avenue is on a footpath leading to Trafford Drive. The column is positioned a concrete fence on some waste ground.
A local resident who chatted to me while I was taking these pictures mentioned that the bowl had blown away in stormy weather, and the lamp was then hanging down dangerously over the footpath for a time, owing to the lamp support having been lost. It then remained as the last SOX lantern the area as the waste ground had to be cleared before access could be gained to install the retro-fit lamp.
The photocell here is a SELC 841.
The missing bowl has made the steel reflector / gear tray become rusty, and the retro-fit lamp's cap has corroded similarly.
The second example on this road is situated at the start of the footpath to Ridyard Street. Again, it is positioned awkwardly, with the base being situated within the garden of an adjacent property.
The concrete is in excellent condition, and no cracks are visible at the point at which the column and bracket join.
With this MI 51 having retained its bowl, the lantern interior remains relatively rust-free. Along with the side-entry MI 50, these lanterns were the Philips version of Thorn's ubiquitous Beta 5.
Curiously, most of the column shaft has been painted brown - notice the lighter, unpainted section around the base. This is not the result of the concrete being damp, and the base having dried out.
I believe that the bowl fitted here is an older design, with slightly different hinge / toggle clip designs when compared to later versions. This could date the lantern back to around 1979.
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