Off Edward Street, New Bilton, Newbold-on-Avon, Rugby, Warwickshire With thanks to both Aleksander and AgentHalogen_87 for informing me of these Survivors. Following the closure of parts of the former GE Power factory (once, being the home to the British arm of the American Thomson-Houston group, and later, an AEI, followed by a GEC, factory), some of the site's lighting has also become redundant, with a GEC-produced Z9464 lantern, for 90 Watt SOX (low pressure sodium) lamps, having been out of use for many years, though this lantern would not have been produced at this factory, but at the company's Wembley site instead.

The Z9464 is probably a 1970s' example, with a factory-fitted NEMA photocell socket (occupied here by a Fisher-Karpark SS4 photocell) allowing the lantern to switch automatically. The lantern is in poor condition, with the bowl having all but been obliterated, the gear tray / reflector becoming rusty, the lamp support having been lost, and the lamp itself - a GEC / OSRAM product, made at the lamp factory at Shaw near Oldham, which closed in 2000, having developed a blackened outer bulb - an unusual occurrence; these lamps did not usually develop such blackening.

Just visible behind the reflector is a metal plaque that would contain the stamped part code and manufacturing date - later GEC lanterns saw the plaque changed to an adhesive label, and the date code applied using an inked stamp instead. From this angle, the lamp seems far too short to be a 90 Watt example, and could be a 55 Watt instead, with suitable control gear fitted in place of the usual components.

Peering through the abandoned gated access at the end of Edward Street, three tubular steel columns are spotted - two of these still supporting their (potentially, original) Z9538 lanterns, also for 55 Watt lamps (but fitted with 35 Watt lamps here), and the third supporting a later Thorn Beta 5 replacement - very much an "odd one out" in a former GEC factory complex, though as AEI's street lighting assets (including their own Amber Minor, which would evolve into the Beta 5) passed to Thorn in 1967, there is still the link there, for those who know it.

The foreground Z9538, avec wood pigeon, features a decidedly grubby GRP (glass-reinforced plastic) canopy.

The Beta 5 uses an ST7316-type photocell.

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