69CHA. Bean Road, Swan Village, Coseley, Dudley, West Midlands With thanks to Dwight for discovering this Survivor. Situated alongside the security office for the only remaining part of the former Bean Cars (started, predictably by a Mr Bean, but not that one - the one here was Sir George Bean!) factory complex is a 25 ft (8 m) Stanton 8 concrete column with a G-type double arm bracket and two GEC Z8430CM lanterns, for 250 - 400 Watt MBF (high pressure mercury vapour) lamps. These buildings are believed to date to 1956, whilst the Z8430CM was described in catalogues as "new" two years later; it employed a revised glass refractor bowl to optimise the then-new elliptical mercury lamps that featured a phosphor coating. This offered improved colour rendering in comparison to the older, uncoated tubular MA/V (medium pressure mercury) lamps that were used in the original Z8430 lantern. With the Stanton 8 column also becoming available in the late 1950s, this installation is probably all from that decade.

The use of a double-arm bracket at this particular position is surprising, given that one of the lanterns appears to be set above the security office roof. The bracket may have rotated slightly over the years, and there is open yard space behind the office, which would have benefited from the light emitted by the right-hand lantern.

Oddly, a length of cloth is wrapped around both the column and the adjacent barrier - I assume that the mechanism for operating the barrier is defective, and so it is now held upright with the column as an anchor.

A catenary arrangement of telecommunications cables pass in front of the left-hand lantern.

Despite the lanterns being (likely) no longer in use, both are intact, and don't appear to have any notable water or dirt ingress.

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