202M. Various locations: Beck Row, Bury St. Edmund's, Suffolk With thanks to Dwight for informing me of many of the Survivors featured on this page. Still extant in the last days of 2023 were a number of vintage lanterns, with the majority of these made by CU Phosco under their earlier "Phosware" branding. In many cases, these lanterns are attached to columns produced by Phosware's column division, Concrete Utilities.
Clement's Way is home to an early example of a P153 lantern. Originally, this would have run a 45 - 60 Watt SO/H / SOI/H lamp, but thanks to subsequent improvements to sodium lamp technology, would be running a 35 Watt SOX lamp (itself, an obsolete product) when pictured in late December 2023.
The slight 'bulged' section in the centre of the canopy is an indicator that this is an early P153 example - this being a necessity at the time, owing to the bulky ballast that ran the lamp on gear-in-head versions of the lantern.
The underside of the bowl is grubby, but undamaged.
A P153 featuring the later canopy design was to be seen a little further along the road. Both examples are attached to Byway 'X' columns with side-entry Arc 4 brackets.
Unlike that of its older sibling, the bowl on this lantern is in poor condition, and is held in place with cable ties and insulation tape.
Part of the lamp is visible through the broken Perspex.
The adjoining Lamble Close also saw Byway-X columns used, but topped with P107 lanterns.
The bowl on this example is completely transparent, allowing the SOX lamp to be seen in all of its glory within the lantern.
"Phosco - Made in England" is cast into the lantern's base section.
A nearby example featured the same type of short overhang canopy, but this time, a translucent bowl was used.
The detector for a Royce Thompson P42 two-part photocell is visible on the P107's canopy.
A third variant, with a wide-brimmed canopy and semi-translucent (caused by UV degradation - it would have been transparent too when new) Perspex bowl was a little further up Lamble Close.
The degradation has caused the plastic to craze, and even break away in a small portion - again, insulation tape has been used to patch the hole. This example may run an 80 Watt MBF (mercury vapour) lamp.
This part of Lamble Close was home to several noticeably short Byway 'X' columns - these are probably 10 ft (3.048 m) in height, rather than the more common 15 ft (5 m) version.
For the most part, P153s survive here too. The translucence of this example's bowl appears to allow an over-lamp reflector to be glimpsed within the lantern; this may serve to conceal control gear components behind it.
The narrow central refractors on the long sides of the bowl were probably designed with 45 Watt lamps in mind, which these examples may have run when new, owing to their reduced mounting height.
The shortness of the columns is apparent in this view.
The brackets here are the type that have a 15 degree tilt - the idea being that the lantern's output would extend to the full width of the carriageway.
This example was to be found opposite Beverley Close.
Once again, the bowl transparency varies greatly between consecutive lanterns.
On Beverley Close itself, another example existed - the column here now situated behind a fence.
A small hole is visible beneath the bowl refractor, although the lantern is in good condition otherwise.
The newer Oak Drive has this Davis 'Highbeam' PT1197 fitted to a 5 m tubular steel column (painted in regulation Suffolk light green) at the end of the road.
The lantern appears rather ill-fitting to the column's rather narrow, nonstandard spigot.
Further down the road, another Highbeam existed, although this one was fitted to a Byway X column.
With the concrete column being unpainted, the lantern has managed to escape being painted here, and the aluminium base casting remains its original aluminium finish. The 'reeded' style of bowl seen here is an unusual option.
At the start of the road, a fourth type of P107 could be seen.
This version features a canopy without any overhang at all.
Holmsey Green Gardens remained home to several P153s; two are pictured here.
The bowl on this example is in remarkable condition, with the lamp being fully visible within it.
Only a small amount of debris is gathered on the bottom of the bowl.
Sadly, the P153 at the start of the road is not in as good a condition.
The front section of the bowl has broken away from its hinge, necessitating the use of cable ties to hold everything together.
An early Thorn Beta 5 / AEI Amber Minor was to be found on Shrub House Close.
Of particular note is the original three-piece bowl - these are notoriously fragile, and because of this, are rather rare.
The translucent ends are a unique feature to this style of bowl - with all subsequent designs being a single moulding, the ends became transparent.
A little further along was this Byway X column topped with an Arc 5 bracket and ELECO GR 525 lantern.
As with the far older P153 design, the GR 525's canopy is raised to accommodate the lamp control gear - by the time that it was made, gear component size had reduced considerably, however.
The later design means that this will have run 35 Watt SOX lamps from new.
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