28. Sadler Gate, City Centre. Along this narrow street are a number of replica brackets, and lanterns which run metal halide lamps. I originally believed these fittings to be very old, however Mr A Radley, now working at ABB street lighting, gave me a brief history of these fittings, and they're not really that old at all!
"These were purchased by Derby City council in the mid 1990s from a company whose name I do not recall; they were located near Mansfield but subsequently ceased trading. The lights were installed by East Midlands Electricity Contracting. I was the contract manager. I remember the great difficulty we had to find a secure fixing in the old brickwork on some of the buildings. The work was entirely done on Sundays due to high volumes of pedestrian traffic on weekdays. The reason the units have remote separate photocells is that no-one at Derby City realised when ordering the fittings that the manufacturers had made no provision for fitting a photocell to the lantern and thus individual remote cells were the only practical solution. (perhaps that's why they went bust)".
© 2002-2008 Mike Barford