57AA. Birchwood Drive, Kingsbourne, Nantwich, Cheshire With thanks to Dwight for informing me of these Survivors. Situated on a footpath (known as Heathside) that passes through Birchwood Drive from Birchin Lane to Millstone Lane are a number of wooden poles supporting the overhead electricity supply, as well as some 1950s' Revo brackets and fuse boxes that accommodate GEC 'Small Oxford' Z5566 lantern for 80 - 125 Watt Mercury Vapour (MBF) lamps. Remarkably, the lanterns still ran MBF lamps when pictured in July 2024 - a few were operating in daylight at the time; the others may have been lit too, but the lamps could have become dim on those. Quite how these installations would be maintained, or even replaced, would be quite an undertaking, which could be why they have been left in place.
The first installation is near Birchin Lane, as the footpath arrives at Birchwood Drive.
The glass refractor bowls fitted to each of the lanterns are all intact and (largely) undamaged.
The presence of the overhead cables on only one side of the pole shows that this is the start (or end) of the run. Interestingly, all of this infrastructure appears to exist solely to feed the lighting - the overhead supplies do not feed any of the properties that are in the vicinity of them.
Something that I haven't seen previously is the inclusion of electrical insulators on the brackets - I assume that the original overhead supply featured un-insulated conductors, which terminated onto these. The insulators will have become obsolete when the cabling was renewed with insulated conductors. I am surprised that the opportunity to divert the cable underground, and install columns along the footpath (or do away with the lighting altogether), wasn't taken during this renewal work.
The Revo fuse / control gear boxes are rather substantial, even considering the size of 1950s' control gear components.
The bowl glinted in the early morning sunlight during photographing.
The second installation was spotted after walking a short distance towards Millstone Lane.
Portions of the bowl appear to have been subjected to masking at some point in the past - the narrowness of the footpath would result in some light overspill onto adjacent properties.
This lantern appeared to be lit, although I wasn't sure if this was the sunlight refracting through the bowl and (presumed) separate internal refractor dome. This bowl has some minor damage, although the glass is thick enough to have prevented it from breaking all the way through.
This installation was located adjacent the end of Birchwood Drive.
This lantern was definitely operating - a dim MBF lamp was visible within the bowl. Rather than having a top-entry finial, this and the next bracket had a simple right-angled curve to accommodate the top-entry lantern.
This was the final installation on the footpath. Not too much further on from this, Heathside widens out slightly, allowing vehicular access to a few properties, but has no lighting installed along it.
The box door was slightly ajar - the two-prong Revo locking bolt appearing to have sheared.
This example too was, clearly, dayburning.
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