Off Claybrook Drive, Washford East Industrial Estate, Matchborough, Redditch, Worcestershire With thanks to Leo Conway for discovering these Survivors. Installed in a works car park near the entrance to the Industrial Estate are two 25 ft (8 m) Abacus base-hinged columns, both of which support a Thorn Gamma 4 post-top lantern, designed for running up to three lamps, with 3 × 400 Watt being the maximum quantity and wattage permissible. The two columns could be left over from when the Industrial Estate was a larger Engineering Works, although this map produced no later than 1974 indicates that the area now used as the car park was undeveloped at the time.

I suspect that the car park extended to the full width of the area originally, with the two columns providing area lighting throughout. A later wooden panel fence now divides the car park from the rest of the premises.

These examples are just over three feet (914 mm) in diameter, although Thorn produced a four foot (1219 mm) version too.

The outer piece of the base casting unscrews, which then releases the bowl, allowing access to the inside of the lantern. The canopy remains fixed to a central spine ordinarily.

The presence of the fence, together with the size of the lantern, would make maintenance on these lanterns difficult, and in all likelihood, they are probably abandoned, as separate floodlights now face the car park area.

The hinged base sections of the columns are to the older, thinner design used by Abacus until (approximately) the mid-1980s.

The columns are positioned such that both hinges are facing each other, meaning that the lanterns would be closer together when the columns were lowered for maintenance. Given the weight of the Gamma 4, even with the lamp control gear installed remotely, a fairly substantial counterbalance unit would be needed to ensure that the columns were lowered safely.

The use of the base-hinged columns must have made maintaining the lanterns slightly more fiddly, ironically, as ordinarily, three equally-spaced lugs would be accommodated a short distance down the column shaft to support the bowl in its lowered position. As these are not present on these columns, the lower casting, and the bowl itself, would be free to slide right down the column shaft if allowed.

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