Castle Walk Footbridge, Castlefields, Shrewsbury, Shropshire With thanks to LeoLampposts for informing me of these Survivors. Installed at either end of the footbridge are two 15 ft (5 m) Stanton 7 concrete columns, which will be original to the bridge's 1951 construction. Today, these are topped with lanterns resembling Vandalite Skyes (the same design was produced by several manufacturers), but previously, Thorn Gamma 6s were installed; presumably, post-top lanterns were always used here. Undertaking maintenance on these lights must be a rather taxing process, as there is limited vehicular access, and using ladders for maintenance is not an ideal solution either, especially when concrete columns are involved.

These two columns are installed at the southern side of the bridge. No lighting is installed on the section of the bridge that spans the River Severn, so the doubling up of columns will have been to increase light levels over the bridge - as well as creating symmetry, of course.

The columns are all sleeved these days, so brackets may have existed originally, but no photographic evidence of this has surfaced currently.

The lanterns appear to run an LED light source, judging by the white panels that are visible within them.

The lack of a lamp hanging vertically within the lantern also supports the LED theory.

The installations at the northern end of the bridge are positioned identically.

A length of tape has been used to hold the base section of this lantern to its base section, as well as to hold the top of the bowl to the canopy.

The earliest versions of the Stanton 7 featured slightly wider bases than these examples do, owing to the additional internal space required to accommodate older lamp control gear components. By the early 1950s, reduction in component size allowed the bases to be made narrower, meaning that these columns were probably cutting edge at the time of installation.

The root sections of the columns seem to pass into the bridge structure. Any attempts to replace them would also be very difficult, which is probably why they have survived.

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