Southend street lighting

[JamesA4311]

Whole main roads full of concrete columns still going strong in Southend. Nearly all sleeved and most wearing SGS203s but still a very healthy dose of SOX to be had.

Some pictures for your enjoyment...

Junction of East Street, West Street and Victoria Avenue (aka the A127) at Prittlewell... double-bracketed concrete column in the central reservation of the A127, with another two in the background across the road:

Same junction, just in to East Street... a bowl-less turtle on curved unsleeved column in the foreground; unusual dayburning SOX (more on those shortly) on a sleeved column in the background, with plenty more to be seen down the road:

And directly opposite that one, I wondered if this column was once painted in black and white stripes to make it more visible to motorists on Victoria Avenue? I couldn't see any others that looked to be painted that way.

Someone suggested to me that concrete columns tended to be more commonly left untouched in seaside towns because they are unaffected by the salty air which tends to accelerate the corrosion of metal ones. Is this true?

J

[JamesA4311]

More on the SOX lantern I didn’t recognise. There are quite a few of these in Southend, but I’ve never seen them anywhere else. My guess is that it’s a GEC product since the rest of Southend and the A127 seems mostly to have been furnished with GEC kit, and it looks like a bulkier version of the classic “brick”.

Along West Street there is a programme of replacement but here are some pics to enjoy and which I hope will aid identification.

Looking down West Street towards the A127/Victoria Ave:

(Incidentally, I also don't know the identity of the lantern on the other side of the road... I know they are much more common (lots in Nottinghamshire, if I remember correctly). These are the ones that look like a cheaper, nastier, squarer version of the MA, with a great big ugly gear-bowl stuck on the back. Anyway, back to the point...)

Now for the curve ball! When they are dayburning (and a lot of them do) you can see that the bowl is TOTALLY OPAQUE except for the completely flat bottom surface:

And another on East Street, not for the chop quite so soon it seems:

I’d love to know what they are.

[JamesA4311]

Last lot I promise! I don’t usually take much interest in “group B” lighting as found on side streets, but I couldn’t resist photographing these on Colchester Road.

This seems to be a “cut and shut” effort on an old gas column, engineered with considerably less finesse than a similar principle applied in Cambridge:

Here’s a closeup of how it’s done. This one seems to have withstood the ravages of time pretty well, and is the only one in the street that looks even vaguely upright!

And now for a nice illustration of why this wasn’t a particularly great idea:

The yellow warning signs say “Danger live cables”, by the way

[Brenley Corner]

I used to visit Southend a lot as a child in the 70s as my Dads family came from there - and I was down there last week to revisit old family haunts. Those SOX lanterns that you highlight on the concrete columns used to be everywhere around Southend; the vast majority have already been chopped. The Turtles that you mention used be all along Victoria Avenue.

There were some lovely columns along the central reservation the A127 Arterial Road within the suburban boundary of Southend. If my childhood mind can remember correctly they had SOX lanterns (similar to the ones in your photos) hung from the top of an open loop and the lanterns were transversely aligned to the road. Looking back on it from now, I would imagine that the columns were original to the building of the Arterial Road and the lanterns had been retro-fitted during the 60s. By the end of the 70s these columns had largely been replaced with those still there today which in turn have been retro-fitted with replacement lanterns.

Tony

[Bryn666]

The black and white paint would appear to be a hangover from the Blackout regulations during the Second World War - is that column really a 1930s/40s installation?

[Brenley Corner]

The black and white paint would appear to be a hangover from the Blackout regulations during the Second World War - is that column really a 1930s/40s installation?

I think that time-frame is unlikely. Again I have vague memories of the application of black and white paint to lamp-posts to warn of solid structures (concrete lamp-posts) in the Southend area. It seemed to be used in the vicinity of junctions.

A lot of the concretes in Victoria Avenue were fairly new in the 70s - complete with their Turtle lanterns - after that final part of the A127 was dualled to Victoria Circus as part of the town centre road improvements of the time.

Tony

[True Yorkie]

And now for a nice illustration of why this wasn’t a particularly great idea:
http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/forum/dow ... d=1441&t=1
(I've relinked to the image. I can't show it because, even though it got uploaded here in the first place, I'm now being told "images may only be up to 640 pixels high" and 640 pixels wide... WTF??!!)


The yellow warning signs say “Danger live cables”, by the way

Um, yeah... not exactly an aesthetic treasure - or particularly safe-looking!

Someone suggested to me that concrete columns tended to be more commonly left untouched in seaside towns because they are unaffected by the salty air which tends to accelerate the corrosion of metal ones. Is this true?

Most likely

More on the SOX lantern I didn’t recognise. There are quite a few of these in Southend, but I’ve never seen them anywhere else. My guess is that it’s a GEC product since the rest of Southend and the A127 seems mostly to have been furnished with GEC kit, and it looks like a bulkier version of the classic “brick”.
~~~
Now for the curve ball! When they are dayburning (and a lot of them do) you can see that the bowl is TOTALLY OPAQUE except for the completely flat bottom surface:

Looks like the GEC Z9450, or something of similar vintage (the precursor to the popular Z9454 range). There's some in leeds by the Transpennine rail line heading west out of the city. Your examples look the be the aeroscreen version (if such a version ever 'officially' existed) - that is, a cut off lantern.

On the other hand, they could be something similar to the Eleco HW509

(Incidentally, I also don't know the identity of the lantern on the other side of the road... I know they are much more common (lots in Nottinghamshire, if I remember correctly). These are the ones that look like a cheaper, nastier, squarer version of the MA, with a great big ugly gear-bowl stuck on the back. Anyway, back to the point...)

Thorn Alpha 4.
I don't think they're ugly - but then again I do own one!

[Doive]

I'd agree with Yorkie - the day burning SOX lanterns look to be from the Z9450 family, canopy looks similar. A popular lantern up here in Scotland, quite a few cut-off versions installed in industrial estates in the central belt next to the M8, so no earlier than late 1960s or early 70s, mounted on steel columns that look to be early 70s vintage.

See here. The road appears to be randomly populated with Z9454s and the cut-off versions of the same family, so which came first is anyone's guess. I would assume fully cut-off lanterns were originally installed to reduce glare on the motorway.

[Gram587]

See here. The road appears to be randomly populated with Z9454s and the cut-off versions of the same family, so which came first is anyone's guess. I would assume fully cut-off lanterns were originally installed to reduce glare on the motorway.

Those columns could do with a lick of paint!

[worcsfan]

Last lot I promise! I don’t usually take much interest in “group B” lighting as found on side streets, but I couldn’t resist photographing these on Colchester Road.

This seems to be a “cut and shut” effort on an old gas column, engineered with considerably less finesse than a similar principle applied in Cambridge:

IMG_9174.JPG

Here’s a closeup of how it’s done. This one seems to have withstood the ravages of time pretty well, and is the only one in the street that looks even vaguely upright!

IMG_9170.JPG

And now for a nice illustration of why this wasn’t a particularly great idea:

IMG_9166.JPG

The yellow warning signs say “Danger live cables”, by the way

Lampa like that all over Dublin...Windmill Lane by the recording studios used by U2 and off the Drumcondra Road spring to mind.