Right. Prepare for an essay!!
I went to Glasgow today and felt it'd be rude not to take an opportunity to try and get up close to these mysterious "dust bin lid" lanterns.
Looking at the GSV links provided, at least one of the lanterns nearest the road has disappeared between 2014 and now. Vandals possibly, or just the elements taking toll. I had expected to rock up to where the gate was, poke my camera over the wall with my longest lens on, and give it all it's got.
I was pleasantly surprised when I turned up to find the gate was open. I could see one or two people well beyond it so, as my old mate would say, I "brass necked it" and walked on in. The path is cobbled and overgrown from decades of abandonment. Towards the end of the pathway two of the old lanterns remain. Although several of the columns remain wired to each other, the supply from further on up has been cut.
Here is a link to a pic:
http://i886.photobucket.com/albums/ac70 ... b84fyx.jpgAnd to the lantern itself up close:
http://i886.photobucket.com/albums/ac70 ... mgtbkp.jpgAs a reminder, this is the family photo from 1966 showing the same lantern that originally piqued my interest into how far back they go into Glasgow's lighting history:
http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery ... os=-106492Now, revisiting the history of Glasgow's lighting as a whole this may help putting together the puzzle.
I did some googling and happened upon a scanned copy of the Glasgow Herald with an article about Glasgow's street lighting - this one about the replacement of the last gas lamp. What I didn't realise until later on is the article was from September 1971! So until ~50 years ago, Glasgow was at least in small part lit by gas lighting. Although gas street lighting had disappeared at time of writing, lighting in stairways and tenement closes was stated as still partly gas, and this is corroborated by stories I've been told by my grandmother who left Glasgow not long before this.
The article goes on to give some key points of history of Glasgow's lighting. Lighting may have begun in Glasgow as far back as 1780, with 9 oil lamps between Tron Steeple and Stockwell Street. By 1815 there were over a thousand lamps, although it states that in those days general practice was for a servant to carry a lamp for you and light the way! By 1818 the first gas street lamp had been installed and the article suggests more followed soon after. I don't know whether this would be mains gas or whether the column bases contained individual tanks. The article states that in 1893 the first electric light was installed, with the labour force of the lighting department rising to 1500 (at the time of writing the article, it had dropped to 1100). At the time of writing the article states that 52,879 electric lights were in place.
A link to the scan is here:
http://i886.photobucket.com/albums/ac70 ... cs5its.jpgUp until recently I had been going on the assumption that Glasgow largely skipped mercury lighting, perhaps going from incandescent (or gas!) straight to SOX. The abundance of early SOX lanterns and very old concrete columns, along with sighting no old mercury stock at all appeared to support this.It was perhaps too big of an assumption though, as not all of Glasgow's SOX is
old old, some of it being of 80s, 90s and early 00s vintage. Another little bit of googling brought me to this photo album taken in 1980:
https://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3 ... 225&RH=647A little bit down there is a photo of a street nearly full of Alpha Threes. It's 1980 so it could be either SON or HPL realistically. There are almost no installations like this left in Glasgow, so they were either replaced with more modern HPS stock or they were merc that was replaced with SOX. Of course they could have been SON and replaced by SOX, as bizarre as that would be.
At this point its probably not unreasonable to assume that from around 1900 to 1960, Glasgow's lighting would be a mix of gas and electric lighting, with the former dwindling in numbers over time. First incandescent lighting, then perhaps some mercury, then what would appear to be a large scale SOX changeover between the 60s and 70s. Much of the SOX stock in Glasgow is very old, and between it being put in and present day there appears to have been a pause - at least in some areas. Modern SON/MH is present in some areas, mostly city centre or major roads, and LED is starting to come in but many places look to have remained untouched for up to and beyond 30 years.
Coming back to the mystery "dust bin lid" lanterns that I saw up close today, I can confirm they were incandescent by the remains of the fitted lamp and were in service until at least the mid 60s going by street furniture in the background of a family photo. That is, the lantern type as a general - this specific installation may only have died 20-30 years ago. The style of them suggests 1930s-1950s to me - not much later because of the design cues. They have a utilitarian, almost austere feel - and not a more glamorous design that I would expect from something newer. So my guess is going to be roughly post [2nd world] war which may be when Glasgow did a mass adoption of Electric. The fact that many of the same columns and brackets (and overhead wires!) still remain in Glasgow today means they are really overdue a lighting stock upgrade.
This is a combination of the two above pictures with the details inset to the wider picture. You can clearly see the remains of what was probably a 3 or 500 Watt clear incandescent lamp which, from the remains, bears distinctions to GEC branded lamps of the time.
![Image](http://i886.photobucket.com/albums/ac70/trencheel303/Glasgow%20old%20incandescent%20street%20lighting/Original%20Incandescent%20Lanterns%20Tradeston_blended_inset_halfsize_zpsiau7vlm2.jpg)