Lamp post outside Charing Cross Police Station

Summary

A gas street light comprising a column dated 1910, with an Upright Rochester lantern manufactured by Sugg Lighting Limited, probably in the 1980s.

Reasons for Designation

The lamp post outside Charing Cross Police Station, with a 1910 column and a 1980s lantern, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic interest:

* as a good example of an historic lamp column with the latest, improved lantern, illustrating the final stage of the evolution of gas lighting technology in the C20;
* as one of a number of lamp posts originally installed around Covent Garden in 1910 to mark the beginning of George V's reign.

Architectural interest:

* for the well-crafted, decorative column in cast iron, which is a good example of early C20 street furniture;
* for the design of the 1980s Upright Rochester lantern, the final C20 evolution of the enduring, inverted and 'shadowless' gas lamp.

Group value:

* as part of an adjacent set of historic lamp posts on Chandos Place and a wider group across other key streets within the Covent Garden area.

History

Gas street lighting first appeared in London in June 1807 when Frederick Albert Winsor gave a public demonstration of gas lights in Pall Mall. The expansion of the railways coinciding with the development of urban gas works in the 1840s facilitated the proliferation of cast iron lamp posts with open-flame gas burners across the capital in the mid-C19. This feature of industrialisation was seen to contribute to London’s international standing and also facilitated the development of modern urban living, increasingly unconstrained by daylight hours.

Electric street lighting was introduced in the 1880s and the gas industry responded by making technological improvements to gas lights, principally the incandescent gas mantle in 1896. This significantly increased the efficacy of gas light, but it was not until the introduction of the inverted gas mantle in 1905 that gas street lights were really able to match the efficiency and brightness of the rival electric carbon filament lamps. In the 1920s and 1930s, many gas lamp posts in Westminster were upgraded with new, 'shadowless' lanterns fitted with inverted mantles. Gas remained an important source of power for street lighting as late as the mid-C20, and smaller numbers of lamps have continued to run on gas into the early C21.

Chandos Place (known as Chandos Street until 1937) takes its name from the fourth Earl of Bedford's father-in-law, the third Lord Chandos. It was developed from the 1630s but most of the present buildings date from the second half of the C19.

The lamp post outside Charing Cross Police Station was probably installed as part of a planned lighting scheme in 1910 to mark the beginning of King George V's reign. The Rochester-type lantern is a post-war replica supplied by Sugg Lighting, probably installed in the 1980s to replace an older Rochester lantern by William Sugg & Company. Rochester lanterns were the 'storm-proof' version of a series of lanterns introduced from the early C20 and went on to become one of the most popular designs of shadowless lanterns. William Sugg and Company sold large numbers for use in street lighting, railway stations and goods yards.

Founded in Westminster in 1837, the company became an important supplier of interior and exterior gas lighting and received important commissions such as lighting the exterior of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle in 1901. After initially operating from Marsham Street, for most of its lifetime the company was based at Vincent Works, Regency Street and Ranelagh Works, Chapter Street. Lighting manufacture was paused during the First World War while the company produced munitions, but post-war work picked up with the production of conversion sets for pre-war street lanterns, many of which still had upright mantles and required updating to more efficient inverted mantles. Manufacture was paused again in the Second World War but afterwards demand for new Rochester lanterns greatly increased, partly to replace lamps damaged in the Blitz. William Sugg and Company was acquired by Thorn Electrical Industries Limited in 1968, but in 1973 a new incarnation of the company called Sugg Lighting Limited was formed and continued to produce specialist gas lighting fixtures based on historic models.

Details

A gas street light comprising a column dated 1910, with an Upright Rochester lantern manufactured by Sugg Lighting Limited, probably in the 1980s.

MATERIALS: cast iron lamp post with a glazed lantern of iron and spun aluminium.

DESCRIPTION: the lamp post consists of a tapering, fluted column, identified as model 1275 in the William Sugg catalogue and known as the 'Eddystone', with an Upright Rochester lantern. The base of the column has the Westminster City Council crest embossed on one side. On the other side is the royal cypher G V R and a date of 1910. Below this, additional plaques bear the serial number (illegible) and the name of the column manufacturer: Revo Tipton. The lantern has a circular, weatherproof chimney above an inverted, six-mantle burner in a teardrop-shaped glass enclosure with a drainage hole to its base. The main body is supported on a pair of upright arms, which project at right-angles from the cast iron control clock box and pass the horizontal enamelled steel reflector to provide the gas supply to the burner. These arms have decorative scrollwork and the clock box bears the name: SUGG.

Sources

Books and journals
Pollard, N E, A Short History of Public Lighting in the City of Westminster in IPLE Lighting Journal, (March 1984), 53-58

Websites
Survey of London: Volume 36, Covent Garden: Bedford Street and Chandos Place Area, accessed 16 June 2023 from https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol36/pp263-265
'One Hundred Years' a brochure produced to commemorate the centenary of William Sugg & Company (1937), accessed 16 June 2023 from https://williamsugghistory.co.uk/

End of official list entry

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