Firstly, a look at Colchester town centre. The town still retains a number of Stewart & Lloyds columns, although the open GLS lanterns they first supported are long gone. Here, these Philips SGS203s (quite modern by Colchester standards) have been fitted with Telensa telecells.
But these Alpha Threes, on a different style of Stewart & Lloyds columns (these ones originally held fluorescent lanterns) also got telecells.
And the Alpha Three on this (quite possibly the most puzzling) column in the town centre also got a telecell.
Wall-mounted Alpha Threes didn't escape, although the original thermal cell on the control box stays in place (despite disconnection) to keep the electrics dry.
This good-condition geared GEC Z8536 in the High Street also received a telecell...
...alongside remote-geared GEC Z8526's in Middleborough.
In Colchester High Street, this three-armed teardrop lantern opposite the war memorial received more sympathetic treatment, with a more expensive type of telecell which hides the unit's workings inside the canopy. Only the aerials are visible from the outside.
Another 'teardrop' casual replacement at the other end of the High Street has received a standard telecell in error.
Many of the town centre's gas columns still remain in service, although they now use electricity instead. The addition of a telecell is the latest in a long line of changes this old gas column has seen.
A SON lantern in a SOX-lit street doesn't look too disjointed to the casual observer, as SOX (amber) and SON (golden) have broadly similar colours at the warm end of the colour temperature scale. My theory is that [Essex County Council] are reluctant to switch to modern light sources because they are invariably all white or cooler than white, and the introduction of white-light casual replacements into streets currently lit by a warm amber glow will look careless. And with the current slow pace of change, it could be an awkward 50 or 60 years of mixed yellow and white lights before the county's roads are finally converted over to white light. Well, blow me down, that could be about to change...
Colchester Gazette, Thursday 4th December 2014.
After many decades of installing SOX and SON,
Essex County Council are now going to trial LED street lighting, and Colchester town centre will be part of the trial.ECC continues to be bombarded with criticism for its new part-night lighting policy, which is far more aggressive than the old part-night lighting that was in place in the county until the 1980s.
Clacton Gazette,Thursday 5th September 2013.
The new part-night lighting has been in place for about a year now. This week
Essex was voted the worst authority for street lighting in a public satisfaction poll, and many councillors in the Borough and District Councils are so desperate to get the lights back on that they are willing to pay Essex County Council money out of their own budgets to cover the cost
(e.g. in Tendring, which covers Clacton-on-Sea, Frinton-on-Sea, Walton-on-the-Naze and Harwich). However, such an initiative requires the agreement of the majority of the council, which Tendring couldn't quite manage:
Clacton Gazette, Thursday 27th November 2014.
Essex is formed by 12 District and Borough Councils and two Unitary Authorities - Southend and Thurrock. Essex County Council has no control over the two Unitary Authorities, and both
Southend and
Thurrock are replacing their existing street lighting stock with LED - a policy Essex County Council rejected in favour of part-night lighting due to the high initial outlay.
So, how will Colchester town centre change? There has been very little in the way of capital investment in the town's lighting since the three-eighties were taken down. The town centre has an eclectic mix of SON-running geared and ungeared GEC and Thorn turtles, GEC Z8600s, Philips SGS203s, 204s, TrafficVisions, some random heritage lanterns and the occasional WRTL Arc and Philips Iridium have even turned up in the last few years.
North Hill in Colchester, as photographed by Keith Mirams for the 1968 Shell Guide to Essex.
The same scene in June 2010.
The junction of North Hill, Middleborough and St. Peter's Street, which is at the bottom of North Hill. This photograph is from a 1966 book called Colchester: An Historic Townscape by Essex County Council's Planning Department.
The same junction photographed in September 2010.
Ironically, North Hill is one of the few streets in Colchester to have benefited from what seemed to be a pre-planned replacement of old lighting stock (as opposed to casual replacements), when all but one of the Stewart & Lloyd columns were replaced in one go in February 2012:
New lighting installed on North Hill in February 2012.
The clear hope is that Essex County Council do their research in the first instance and don't make a mess of this trial through incorrect specification that could lead to any number of the obvious pitfalls:
• ECC don't just bypass the control gear and chuck LED corn lights in the existing lighting stock - such a trial would surely fail, and they'd be better off replacing the SON bulbs with same-gear metal halide bulbs instead;
• ECC don't choose LED lanterns that only light the area immediately underneath the lantern, instead of the good spread of light achieved by the currently installed turtles and other bowled lighting stock. This would cause dark spots in the town centre and make it look unappealing and uninviting to visitors;
• ^ that the reaction to the above scenario were it to happen would be to infill between existing columns with more columns, thereby ruining Colchester's historic vistas and street scenes for tourists and shoppers alike;
• ECC don't choose a clinically cold colour temperature for the trial, on the grounds that it's the most efficient of the LED light sources. This would immediately reduce the appeal of the town centre to visitors;
• ECC do their research on the perceived brightness of white light compared to non-white light before any orders are placed, and consequently don't go for like-for-like replacements in the wattage department. If they do go for like-for-like replacements in the wattage department, they'd kill the reason why they wanted the trial in the first place (to save electricity) and may put the town's tanning salons out of business at the same time;
• ECC don't use the trial to try out 30 different lanterns at the same time, so we end up with a mix of different lanterns with different optical properties and different colour temperatures - effectively resulting in the same inconsistency (with the exception of the colour temperature) that Colchester town centre suffers from now;
• and finally ... ECC choose a lantern that actually looks nice instead of some of the hideously ugly carbuncles that are currently on the market and infesting private car parks up and down the land. In Colchester town centre, aesthetics is everything;
• ^ I'd even be happy to see something as unusual as the WRTL Stela chosen as a trial lantern, if Essex County Council would be prepared to make a proper job of installation - e.g. all bracket arms removed from current columns and the lanterns are uniformly installed post-top. That would clear up the current mess of brackets with different uptilt angles and different outreach lengths.
It's only a short list of wants
. Whatever happens, there are interesting times ahead for Colchester.