Thank you Phosco152 and Alex for your kind comments.  

Having had an (inexplicable) interest in street lighting for as long as I can remember, every now and then I have a desire to walk along mercury-lit streets in quiet enjoyment and appreciation. Such walks may bring back memories of my grandparents (who lived in Frinton-on-Sea) and the late-night dog walks with my Grandad. The street lamp outside their house in Hadleigh Road was an original-spec pale-blue Phosco P111. Else such a walk down memory lane may remind me of Coopers Lane in Clacton-on-Sea (also mercury-lit at the time) where we lived for the first 10 years of my life (circa. 1975 to 1985). The street lamp outside our house at the time was a GEC Z5671.

I'm blessed to live in an area of the country (north east Essex) where MBF/U is still used in sufficiently high quantities to indulge in such nostalgia, for the time being at least.

Frinton-on-Sea is the best town by far for street lighting enthusiasts to see mercury-lit streets, but Jaywick, Clacton-on-Sea, Holland-on-Sea and Walton-on-the-Naze still have mercury fixtures (installed before Essex's switch to SOX in the 1970s) in nightly service. They are happy to be re-lamped while stocks of mercury lamps are still available.


Having said that, no new MBF/U fixtures since the 1970s and the expiration of the existing mercury stock through column or lantern old age / road traffic accidents means that mercury lanterns are now the exception rather than the norm, e.g Coopers Lane in Clacton-on-Sea above. The mercury lantern above is the only one left in a street once lit by GEC Z5641s and Z5671s.

All photographs in this post were taken in April and May 2016.


There are still pockets of mercury to be found outside Frinton, e.g. Windsor Avenue in Clacton-on-Sea above.


Another view of Windsor Avenue, Clacton-on-Sea. GEC Z5641s can still be found in Jaywick, Clacton-on-Sea and Holland-on-Sea (the old Clacton Urban District Council area).


Jaywick, Clacton-on-Sea and Holland-on-Sea switched to the GEC Z5671 when it was launched by GEC in the mid-1960s, meaning that these Z5641s must now be 50 years old (my GEC Z5641 from Holland-on-Sea was dated 1959), but you wouldn't be able to tell how old they are just by looking at them, as they have aged far better than lanterns that came out 30 years later like the Davis GR526, Philips SGS203 and Philips MI26.


There are still a few roads (outside Frinton-on-Sea) that have stayed exclusively mercury by avoiding road traffic accidents etc, e.g. Norwood Avenue in Clacton-on-Sea above. Note that the GEC Z5641s originally in this street have expired and been casually replaced with Z5671s and, in the closest instance, a GEC Z5714, which was GEC's last throw of the dice at mercury post-tops, at least in the Clacton area.


Norwood Avenue, Clacton-on-Sea by night. The discoloured cones do really produce a light this green, just like we remember them!


And for additional 1980s nostalgia, Clacton (and most of the rest of Essex) has now reverted back to part-night lighting. The sky glow in the background is from the street lighting in the substantial Valley Farm Holiday Park.

Once again great pics, not only of the lanterns but the now very rare style of column, which I think are made by CU.

Thank you again. Yes, these are the Concrete Utilities "Utility Major" column. Although there are hundreds of them still going in the old Clacton Urban District Council area (Jaywick, Clacton-on-Sea, Holland-on-Sea), I have rarely seen them elsewhere.

Locally, they were installed in the 1950s and early to mid-1960s. In the mid-1960s, the CUDC stopped installing them and switched to the GEC ZP3000 coloured plastic column instead (as well as switching away from the GEC Z5641 to the GEC Z5671). Accordingly, all the Utility Major columns in Clacton are assumed to be in excess of 50 years old.

Furthermore, many of them were apparently intentionally made with that green colour, as were the Concrete Utilities "Avenue 3DNN" and "Highway 'X' 35" columns installed on the main roads.

I was lucky enough to be handed this leaflet when my Dad took me to visit Tendring District Council's Civil Engineer Ray Smith back in 1986 (Tendring District Council replaced the old Clacton Urban District Council in 1974). My Dad arranged this visit due to my interest in street lighting.




Ray informed me that the above photograph was taken close to what is now the Clacton County High School in Walton Road, Clacton-on-Sea.

While they are still going strong, Clacton's Utility Major columns have seen an assortment of casual replacements installed on them when the original GEC Z5641s have failed:

• In the mercury lineage, this would have been the GEC Z5671, GEC Z5679, GEC ZD6526, GEC Z5714 (note: my last post referred to the Z5714 as the Z5719 in error - now corrected), Siemens Z567012NU and most recently the mercury Thorn Gamma 6.

• In the low pressure sodium lineage, this would have been the GEC Z5678, GEC Z5713, Thorn Beta 5, Philips MI26 and most recently the low pressure sodium Thorn Gamma 6. I do not recall ever seeing a low pressure sodium Siemens version of the GEC Z5678 installed locally.


Bespoke brackets were added to some Utility Major columns from the 1980s onwards to enable them to have side-entry lanterns like the Thorn Beta 5 and the Philips MI26 fitted. This photograph of one of the most recent SOX conversions was taken in Clacton-on-Sea in October 2013.

Some Utility Major columns also came with an original concrete bracket and, where installed in Clacton-on-Sea, held a GEC Z9480 lantern.

• In the high pressure sodium lineage, these casual replacements would have been the Thorn Gamma 6, Thorn Riga and most recently the Phosco P567 / P567-A. Note that high pressure sodium casual replacements didn't start appearing in Clacton's street until the mid-2000s, hence GEC and Siemens do not feature.


A new lease of life - the current trend is to post-top local Utility Major columns with Phosco P567s (now P567-As). This photograph was also taken in Clacton-on-Sea in October 2013.

Despite their age, there seems to be little rush to remove these Utility Major columns (thankfully!), unless structural problems are discovered or they are knocked down in road traffic accidents.

The old Stewart & Lloyd columns on the old A12 at Copdock have been replaced with shorter, unpainted columns supporting LED lanterns.

It is amazing to see where some of my pictures turn up. Here is the front cover of Essex County Council's current Street Lighting Operational Plan, dated August 2015:



The document can be downloaded from this page on Essex County Council's web site.

The decision to include my photograph on the front cover is rather ironic considering the stick I've given Essex County Council on here and on Facebook over the last few years about their controversial part-night lighting policy. Did I mention for instance that Essex County Council were voted the worst authority in the country for street lighting in the 2014 National Highways and Transport Network satisfaction survey?

Having said that, Essex is still a SOX stronghold and there are no immediate plans to kill it off, which is something us enthusiasts have to be grateful for these days. And it must be said that the new front cover is a vast improvement on the front cover of their previous Street Lighting Operational Plan  

What a cheek!

I hope they acknowledged the ownership of the photo..

It would have been nice to get a photo credit, but sadly not. Having said that, Essex County Council's Street Lighting Operational Plan is available to download from their website for free and it will never be a bestseller on Amazon, so they're not commercially gaining from using my photograph.

It's still an honour to see one of my photographs used this way. I've had an interest in street lighting for nearly 40 years now, and that book I first saw when I was on work experience in the Civil Engineering department of Tendring District Council back in 1989 now has my photograph on the front of it!

Puzzlingly, I downloaded that document ages ago but never got around to reading it, hence I missed the front cover.

Thanks David! Very comprehensive.

I wonder how the Thorn Civic made it onto the list?!

I don't recall seeing any Civics in my corner of Essex, but they may be installed elsewhere. Perhaps they have to name an example product from each of the major manufacturers in order not to exclude any of them from consideration, and the Civic is the best they could do from Thorn at the time!

There's a similar list of "specials" on pages 74 to 76 which features one decorative lantern from CU Phosco, one from Philips WRTL and one from Thorn, alongside more specialist suppliers like DW Windsor and Sugg. One surprise is that the CU Phosco special is the P545 and not the P111, which is a well-used special in both Colchester and Frinton-on-Sea. Again the P111 may only be popular in this corner of Essex.

Two weeks ago, Essex County Council confirmed that it was starting work on a two-year programme to replace 19,000 of its 127,000 street lights with LED. This affects all the street lighting that was not switched to part-night lighting in 2013 - i.e. town centres, transport interchanges, junctions etc. The Council do not appear to be looking at converting the remaining >100,000 County-controlled street lights to LED yet, which means Essex will still have plenty of vintage SOX and SON to enjoy beyond the completion of this LED roll-out in 2018.

Having said that, there are three reasons that may cause the Council to re-look at this - many people negatively impacted by the reintroduction of part-night lighting see LED as the answer to their woes, the price of SOX lamps is only going to increase, and the price of LED lanterns will continue to decrease in the forseeable future. If the long-term aim of the County is to switch to LED, the current Essex County Council Street Lighting Operational Plan may need to be rewritten to encourage new developers to favour LED over SON.

P.S. I should say that the two "before" and "after" pictures from March 2015 were supplied at full resolution to my local newspaper to illustrate a story the Colchester Gazette were running about the LED street lighting trial in Colchester, and this is how the photograph came to the attention of Essex County Council.

Meanwhile, a walk around Little Clacton (a village just outside Clacton in North East Essex) back in May this year puzzled me, as the lamps in practically every Parish Council controlled street light in some roads appeared to have unusually blackened ends:


An example Thorn Beta 5 in Little Clacton, photographed in May 2016. The lamp in this lantern, and the lamps in all the other lanterns in Holland Road, appeared to have unusually blackened ends.

All photographs of Little Clacton in this post were taken in May 2016.


But a close-up photograph of another Beta 5, this time in Tan Lane, reveals that the original SOX lamp has been replaced with a LED lamp of similar dimensions.


A view of the underside of yet another Beta 5, this time in Harwich Road. The label on the LED lamp reveals it is a 4500K 16W "SL07" LED SOX-replacement lamp from Magnatech LED.


If my memory serves me correctly, Little Clacton's smaller roads like Holland Road, Tan Lane and Harwich Road were originally lit with GLS-running top-entry Phosco P100s affixed to brackets mounted on telegraph poles (Simon Cornwell's Phosco P100). Although the lanterns may have changed, many of the brackets are still original.


Compared to Essex County Council, I recall Little Clacton Parish Council took a little while longer to react to the energy crisis of the 1970s, but nonetheless the population of P100s were wiped out in the 1980s and replaced with (if my memory serves me right - and it is a test of memory!) a mix of Thorn Beta 5s, Eleco GR525s and Davis GR526s, like the one above.


Casual replacements have continued over the years, seeing the appearance in greater numbers of the Philips MI26...


...and in lesser numbers the GEC Z9580.

All 35W SOX lanterns in the control of Little Clacton Parish Council, like the examples above, have now been converted to LED.


Here is the new 16W LED lighting in Holland Road in action. The road has returned to white light for the first time since the Phosco P100s were wiped out circa. 30-35 years ago.


A close-up of two of the LED-converted Thorn Beta 5s at dusk.


As with Weeley just up the road, Little Clacton has some housing estates where the lighting is under control of Essex County Council, and lit to their standards accordingly.


As far as I know, Essex County Council currently has no plans to change the vast majority of its street lighting (the lighting that is subject to its part-night lighting regime) to LED. Therefore some streets in Little Clacton will remain SOX for the forseeable future, and still switch off between 1am and 5am.


The B1441 through Little Clacton is also lit by Essex County Council.


This is a "work in progress" photograph taken in St. Osyth Road in May 2016 before the LED conversions were completed. It shows that, despite the much lower wattage of the LED bulbs, the new bulbs are more than a match for the SOX bulbs they replaced.


Having identified the bulb now being used in Little Clacton, and seeing what a good job it was doing, I went and bought one. These photographs were taken in September 2016.


The 16W SL07 LED SOX-replacement bulb.


And here is how it looks close-up in a Thorn Beta 5 (Ebay purchase).


The only "improvement" I would make to this design, excellent though it is, would be to make a clear plastic hoop of the same diameter as the SOX bulb which would slide along the bulb to the wire loop that holds the lamp in place, take up the slack in the wire loop and level the bulb in the fitting.


How the lamp looks in operation, once the control gear has been bypassed of course!


A view from the underside.


How the illuminated LED lamp looks inside a Thorn Beta 5.


One last "work in progress" view of St Osyth Road from May 2016 showing the new LED installation and old SOX installation side by side.

It is great to see how a small Parish Council can be "light" years ahead of the big boys at Essex County Council!

In common with the nearby villages and seaside resorts in north east Essex, there are still a number of legacy MBF fittings in Little Clacton. So before they disappear for good, here are some that are still going. All these photographs were taken in May 2016.


A day-burning GEC Z5671 on a Concrete Utilities "Utility Major" column in Harwich Road. This is likely to have been installed by the old Clacton Urban District Council. If I recall correctly, control of District Council street lighting was handed over to Essex County Council in 1974.


This one-off Phosco P107 casual replacement was for a knocked-down GEC Z5671 on a Concrete Utilities "Utility Major" column in Harwich Road.


An off-balance Davis PT1179 casual replacement, also in Harwich Road.


This Phosco P107 has stood on the traffic island at the junction of Harwich Road and Tan Lane for all of my living memory, but as of May 2016 it looked like this.


A close-up of the stricken lantern. As of August 2016, the column has been retained and a Phosco P567A installed as a replacement.


A privately-owned Eleco HW828 near the junction of St. Osyth Road and London Road. The cone is broken, and the owner has covered the hole with plastic sheeting secured with electrical tape.


The damaged lantern is still in light, and produces the familiar mercury glow.