10d. Mount Pleasant Road, Repton. Located on a rather
rural section of this road is a somewhat out-of-place installation: an 8 m
column supporting a
Thorn Alpha 9 90 W SOX lantern on an otherwise
column-free road. The fact that the column does not carry a local authority
maintenance number perhaps gives you an idea that all is not quite what it seems
with this installation...in fact, the truth is that the column is in private
ownership - it was originally installed as a means of providing illumination to
the car park for a nearby public house; however, this car park later fell into
disuse (and indeed, is nowadays unrecognisable as such; the land having reverted
to nature after being closed), with the column's bracket being rotated in order that
the lantern was instead positioned over the carriageway, allowing it to continue
serving a purpose, and being maintained by a contractor as and when required.
Despite not being in the best of conditions, and the fact that it is somewhat
surplus to requirements, the lantern is (at the time of writing), still
operational at night.

The detector for the
Royce Thompson P42 two-part photocell can
be seen attached to the lantern's canopy; the control gear for the lamp
being situated in the column base.

This close-up reveals the damage that has occurred to the front of the
bowl, resulting in dirt forming within the inside of the luminaire.

This damage can be more clearly seen directly below the lantern.

When viewing the installation from the other side, evidence of the former
car park's existence is limited at best; the only sign of the land's
previous use being the (barely visible) wooden bollards just behind the
grass verge.

The column is believed to have been installed by the East Midlands
Electricity Board (as was) in the 1980s; given the extensive growth of the
bushes and trees within the area, the column cannot have served its intended
purpose for long before the car park was abandoned in favour of a more
convenient piece of land located adjacent the pub - these pictures were
taken in April 2015.