I’ll start a new post for the fourth story, as it will be accompanied by a large number of photographs.
Although it is terrible to witness the demise of large-wattage SOX in the town, there is currently no wholesale replacement of street lighting on side roads. These are generally 80 and 125W MBF/U, 35W SOX and 50 and 70W SON in Clacton-on-Sea and the surrounding areas including St. Osyth, Jaywick, Holland-on-Sea, Frinton-on-Sea and Walton-on-the-Naze, and generally 35W SOX and 50 and 70W SON elsewhere in Essex, noting that there could be pockets of mercury elsewhere in Essex that I am unaware of. Having said that, I understand that there is much-reduced or even no re-lamping of side road lanterns. Instead, new LED lanterns are being fitted to side road columns with expired bulbs.
The junction of Valley Road and Mountview Gardens in Clacton-on-Sea, as photographed on Tuesday night (12th February 2019).
The Philips MA50 on Valley Road (the main road) has just been replaced with a Philips DigiStreet LED lantern, column one on Mountview Gardens with the MA50 will surely suffer the same fate very soon, but the GEC Z5641 will not be touched until the mercury bulb expires, the lantern falls apart from old age or the Concrete Utilities "Utility Major" column is struck by a vehicle.
Here is a mobile ‘phone photograph taken earlier this week at the junction of Valley Road and Mountview Road in Clacton-on-Sea (incorrectly referred to as Mountview Gardens in the earlier post). The photograph shows that the Philips MA50 on column 1 in Mountview Road has become a Philips DigiStreet lantern and the GEC Z5641 on column 2 has become a Phosco P852.
Clacton once had thousands of GEC Z5641s, but their numbers started depleting away as soon as the last ones were installed in the late-1960s. I first became aware that they were starting to disappear – along with the town’s GEC Z5671s – in the mid-1980s. In 1985 and 1986 for example, all of the GEC ZP3000 reinforced coloured plastic “plastopoles” with GEC Z5671s were removed from the housing estate I grew up on, around 80 in total. The housing estate was built in two halves, and the street lighting on the older half of the estate – which had about 50 GEC Z5641s on Concrete Utilities "Utility Major" columns – were left untouched. By the late-1980s, when I would have been about 15 years old, I was certainly aware that the rot was setting in, and in the first instance I borrowed my Dad’s camera to get some of these old installations on film.
Fast forward more than 30 years to 2020, and I estimated earlier this year that there were perhaps between 100 and 200 GEC Z5641s on Concrete Utilities "Utility Major" columns still in nightly service in Clacton-on-Sea, nearby Holland-on-Sea and Jaywick. As we approach the end of 2020, we perhaps still have over 100 that are still hanging on, but not much over 100. I am now in my late-40s, and although I'm not enjoying seeing LED technology hasten the demise of the street lighting from my childhood, I am nonetheless very grateful that the street lighting of my childhood has lasted this long.
Noting that I have spent 35 years being mildly unsettled by the decline of Clacton’s old favourites
(this blog post by Ian Waites describes this mild discomfort rather well), the fourth street lighting-related story that was recently in the press comes from an unexpected source.
A 15 year old lad in Clacton is campaigning to save some of Clacton’s old street lamps, and one GEC Z5641 in particular.When I was Nathan’s age, Mountview Road (as featured in the photographs above, and also the location of the street lamp Nathan wants to save) was lit entirely with GEC Z5641s on Concrete Utilities "Utility Major" columns, with the exception of the first column which was a 35ft Concrete Utilities "New Highway" column
(one, and possibly more of these columns, still survives in Clacton’s Highfield Grange Holiday Park). This column held a deep bowl Thorn Alpha Five running a 135W SOX lamp if I recall correctly (I do not recall any of Clacton’s group A10 lanterns striking up in pink like Colchester’s SLI lanterns did).
At night, Mountview Road originally looked a bit like my avatar, which is Jubilee Avenue in Clacton-on-Sea, photographed in 1995 when the road was still lucky enough to have a complete installation of Z5641s. Mountview Road today has an eclectic mix of one MBF-U lantern, one SOX lantern, one SON lantern and four LED lanterns, and this mixing of light sources is typical of a number of residential streets in Clacton today.
Below is the circa. 35 year journey, in approximate chronological order, of how Mountview Road changed from a uniform installation of GEC Z5641s to the mix of street lights it has today.
The first column to go in Mountview Road was column 7 which went sometime in the mid-1980s. It was replaced with this Thorn Beta 5 on a 5m octagonal pole. The Beta 5 has a plastic bowl clip, which were new at the time (the early 1980s Beta 5s had metal bowl clips). This photograph of column 7 (with column 6 behind) was taken in March 2017.
Column one was the next column to go when the whole of Valley Road (35ft Concrete Utilities "New Highway" columns with deep bowl Thorn Alpha Fives) was relit in the early 1990s with Philips MA50s on 10m tubular steel columns (as in the first photograph in this post).
This is column 5 photographed in March 2017, with column 4 behind. At some point in the 1990s or 2000s, the Z5641 on column 5 was replaced with a wide-brimmed Thorn Gamma Basique which was itself replaced with this SON-running Phosco P567 when the Basique lost its canopy in circa. late 2014 (information from Google Street View!).
In 2009, column 3 was replaced with a 5m tubular steel column with a SON-running Phosco P111 (Google Street View shows both columns side by side). This photograph of column 3, with columns 2 and 1 behind, was taken in October 2013.
Sometime between early-2019 and this year, column 6 was replaced by a 6m tubular steel column with a post-top mounted Phosco P852. Also sometime in this time period, the SON-running Phosco P111 on column 3 was replaced with an LED P111. Just one of the original eight GEC Z5641s survive to this day, on column 4.
A photograph of the junction of Mountview Road and Valley Road taken in fog in February 2019. In this image are column 2 (in the foreground) and column 1 in the background. Also in this photograph is a Philips DigiStreet LED lantern lighting Valley Road and a SON floodlight on the window showroom on the other side of the road. From left to right we have SON, LED, MBF-U and SOX.
Another photograph of Mountview Road taken in fog in February 2019. In this image are columns 5, 6 and 7. From front to back we have SON, MBF-U and SOX.
This photograph is of the junction of Clarendon Park and Mountview Road, also taken on the same night as the above two photographs. The column in the foreground is in Clarendon Park and the column in the background is column 4 in Mountview Road – the last surviving GEC Z5641 in that road and the lantern Nathan wants to save. The lantern in the foreground is also a GEC Z5641 on a Utility Major column.
The same junction in the daytime. This photograph was taken in March 2017.
The same scene as above, also taken on the same night in February 2019, with the paving slabs included for added nostalgia.
40 years ago, most of Clacton’s residential streets looked like this at night (Z5641s on Utility Major columns, or Z5671s on GEC ZP3000 columns), albeit our eyes would do a better job of removing the fluorescent green colour cast (it is of course possible to "Photoshop" the green colour cast away, but I prefer to leave it in!). From about the time of the energy crisis in 1973 and/or the control of street lighting transferring from Clacton Urban District Council to Essex County Council in 1974, new street lighting in Clacton-on-Sea and nearby Holland-on-Sea and Jaywick was switched to SOX.
The newspaper report also refers to Nathan’s desire to save some of the Victorian street lighting in Clacton. Although there is very little Victorian street lighting left in the town, the town does have a small quantity of part-adopted and unadopted roads, and these have some fabulous locally-cast cast iron columns. Holland Park, Boley Drive and even the end of Mountview Road itself are part-unadopted.
A dedicated layer on the Essex County Council Highways Information Map can be switched on to indicate unadopted roads and the location of Essex County Council’s street lighting columns. Clarendon Park is not adopted, meaning the street light in the foreground of the above three photographs is maintained by Tendring District Council, but the section of Mountview Road in the above photographs is adopted, meaning the street light in the background is maintained by Essex County Council.
Further along Clarendon Park, at its junction with Carlton Road, there was this magnificent locally-cast column maintained by Tendring District Council:
This locally cast column was manufactured by F.W. Lewellen and Co Engineers of Clacton-on-Sea. This photograph and the next five photographs were taken in September 2008.
This ladder bar must be the most exquisite ladder bar I have ever seen! I haven’t seen this magnificent ladder bar on any of the other local cast iron street lights in Clacton-on-Sea or Holland-on-Sea.
F.W. Lewellen and Co still have a hardware shop in the town to this day.This additional photograph of the same column and the two photographs below were taken in March 2017.
Why so many photographs of this one particular street light you may ask? Sadly this magnificent locally-cast column has just been destroyed in a road traffic accident. An absolute damn tragedy in my opinion. The four photographs below were taken last week (October 2020).
If the above street light was maintained by Essex County Council, I could easily foresee a prosaic 6m tubular steel column with a Phosco P852 arriving quite soon.
As this knock-down is the responsibility of Tendring District Council, there may be a little more variety in its replacement – perhaps a prosaic Holophane S-Line LED lantern on a 5m tubular steel column.
In an ideal world, a good-condition cast iron column and swan-neck could be sourced by the local Council from a reclaim yard
(perhaps the same reclaim yard where the sea front's top-entry GEC Z8430CMs ended up!), and perhaps if the exquisite ladder bar survived the accident, it could be detached from the original column and reinstated on the new column. All of this is a complete fantasy of course. Back in the real world, Local Authorities have very little spare cash or the time or resources for such a faithful restoration, and furthermore it is likely that only a tiny fraction of Clacton's population may have noticed this magnificent street lamp when it was in situ, and even fewer would care enough to want to see a sympathetic replacement.
There are a few other cast iron columns in the roads around this destroyed cast iron column. Thankfully these other ones aren’t as exposed as this one was. It's worth adding them here for the record. The bases of these other columns below are highly similar to the knocked-down column, but do show some variations. They were also made by Lewellen's of Clacton.
The unadopted section of Boley Drive has three street lights. There used to be two of these cast iron columns, both with modern hockey stick-style brackets and Thorn Beta 5s. This photograph of one of them was taken in September 2008.
The third street light used to be a local authority-spec GEC Z5641 on a Utility Major column, latterly replaced with a Thorn Gamma 6. I believe two, or possibly all three columns have gone now, replaced with 5m tubular steel columns with Thorn Gamma Basiques.
This street light, photographed in March 2017, is one of two in the unadopted section of Holland Park. The bracket is from Bleeco in Brighton. The other street light in the unadopted section is a modern-day hockey stick with a side-entry Thorn Beta 5.
Further afield from the Holland Park area of Clacton-on-Sea, there used to be four similar cast iron installations in Holland-on-Sea, but two have had their swan necks removed.
Phosco152 and I also passed this old cast iron column, which also came from local firm Lewellen's, although sadly sporting a Thorn Beta Five casual replacement (photo taken November 2008)…
The column looked even worse when Phosco and I passed it last weekend. The swan-neck had vanished and a post-top Phosco P567 had been put on the column. It looked such a sorry mess that I may have to return and get a photo of it.
There are two cast iron columns in unadopted Merrilees Crescent in Holland-on-Sea, the first is the shorter column above and the second is identical to the taller column in Holland Park as photographed above. Both have had their swan necks removed since then – one has a Phosco P567 SON lantern and the other has a Holophane S-Line LED lantern.
Holland-on-Sea has two remaining installations identical to the street light in the Holland Park area of Clacton-on-Sea. The one above (photograph taken in November 2008) is at the junction of The Esplanade and Haven Avenue (both unadopted roads).
The second is in unadopted Norman Road, as photographed above in December 2017.
Norman Road has two more cast iron posts – one at the junction of Merrilees Crescent and the other at the junction of Kent’s Avenue.
This cast iron column at the junction of Norman Road and Kent’s Avenue (photographed in March 2014) is the only remaining cast iron column with a wider base.
A close-up image of the elaborately-decorated wide base, as photographed in November 2008.
This cast iron column is at the junction of Norman Road and Merrilees Crescent (photograph taken in August 2015). The hoop bracket is highly unusual, apparently formed of two swan-neck brackets with a double-ended finial at the top.
It is certainly an unusual arrangement, and looks like this at night. Photograph taken in December 2017.
I do have a childhood memory of the next lamp in the street (the column with the wide base and the Thorn Gamma Basique, as pictured earlier) also having the same unusual hoop bracket, but if it was there, it's now been gone for years and years.
These are the oldest lamp posts still in nightly service in Clacton-on-Sea and Holland-on-Sea. Long may they continue if they can. I'm also sure that everyone at UKASTLE wishes Nathan well in his endeavour to save some of Clacton's historic street lighting, and especially the (or a) GEC Z5641.