Lamp Post Fan

Let’s spend some time with some metalic oldies in the South Yorkshire town of Mansfield. The lamp posts featured date from circa the 1960′s/70′s.

Old lamp posts have real character. This fossil is made of a cast iron post and sports a sodium lantern. Sodium lanterns (known as SOX in the trade) glow pink on switch-on (the glow of neon and argon gases), progressing to a yellow/amber shine, as electrons in the outer electron shell of the sodium atoms jump up and down when hot. Lampy will post some pictures of sodiums that are switched on some point.

Here is the creature closer up. Notice the cross bars that were used, in times long past, to support a ladder so that the bulb could be replaced. In those days the lantern would have been a tungsten lantern, containing an old fashioned tungsten light bulb. Those are now being phased out of the interior of people’s houses in favour of more energy-efficient fluorescent models.

An increasingly rare lamp post with a mercury lantern. These lanterns were extremely common in the 70′s and 80′s.

Detail shot. These glow white.

Side street lamp posts scene in Mansfield.

Now for some big steal beasts. Mansfield sports, as of 2009, when these photos were taken, a plethora of Glassy Tank lamp posts! Lampy has always been a huge fan of these awesome, chunky lanterns! Originally they would have contained white-light mercury light bulbs within.

Here are more glassies.

The lantern on this street light (above) is a smaller glassy tank.

More Glassy Tank street lighting on the Mansfield dual carriageway roads.

Here you can see some great street lights at Mansfield bus station. Here is a Glassy Tank lamp post and also a Silver Hippie (technically a Thorn Alpha 3) lamp post.

Finally, here is a Mansfield side street with sodium lamp posts. Lampy is reminded of an Emu. This cast iron lamp post, which is a fossil, has lost its original goose neck shaped top, sadly, which would have been more ornate. Happily, you have already seen one at the top of this very post!

Well time has run out for this post. This is just a small selection of Lampy’s Mansfield street light photos, and indeed photos elsewhere in England. If you’re impatient to see more, then contact Lampy with a request. Indeed he is happy to sell photographs.

Keep photographing those old lampies!