Thirty-Four Catenary Lamp Standards

Thirty-four Catenary Lamp Standards, Victoria Embankment

These cast-iron lamp standards comprise thirty-two examples dating to around 1900, manufactured by Walter MacFarlane and Company at their Saracen Foundry in Glasgow, and two later examples from around 1929 made by Carron Company in Stirlingshire.

The posts feature a distinctive design consisting of a rectangular base with four decorated panels, surmounted by four dolphins whose tails appear to support the shaft. The panel facing the road is inscribed with the date '1900' and displays an image of a female figure, presumably Britannia, holding two shields bearing the arms of the cities of London and Westminster. The panel facing the pavement contains a florid Art-Nouveau-influenced design of a flowering rose tree that dissolves into a ribbon frieze at its base. The two remaining panels feature foliage designs including an oak sprig and acorns. The shaft is topped by a finial and carries a light shade dating from the second half of the twentieth century, which is not of special interest. The lamps are painted black, gold and red.

Most of the original standards bear makers' marks on the base reading 'Walter MacFarlane & Co / Saracen Foundry / Glasgow', though these are often illegible due to accumulated paint layers. Some are also numbered, without any apparent logical sequence. The final pair, positioned at either side of the road where the Embankment meets Westminster Bridge, are marked 'Carron Company / Stirlingshire' and dated 1929.

Twenty-eight of the thirty-four original standards stand between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge, with six further originals located further east, interspersed with modern replicas. The original standards are single castings with makers' marks on their bases, whereas the replicas are less richly detailed, made of two vertically symmetrical pieces designed to fit around modern steel posts, and feature a noticeable vertical seam.

These posts were introduced around 1900 to carry the wires supplying electricity for two street lights that hung above the roadway, suspended by cables strung between each pair of posts in a catenary arrangement. The Victoria Embankment had experimented with electric street lighting as early as 1878, when sixty electric lights were installed in the first such trial in Britain. However, by 1884 these proved inefficient and expensive, and the Embankment returned to gaslight. Following improvements in electrical generation technology, electric lighting was reintroduced along the Embankment around 1900 using these distinctive lamp standards. While it has been suggested that the standards were introduced to carry wires for trams, electric trams were not introduced along the Embankment until 1906. A historical photograph from around the mid-twentieth century shows trams operating on the route without overhead wires, with the lamp standards supporting wires from which street lights were suspended.