Electrical Service / section pillar (near Blanchflowe Park) Holywood Road, Belfast BT4 1SJ

This is a freestanding cast-iron electrical service pillar, or section pillar, sited at the inner edge of the pavement on the north side of Holywood Road, Belfast, just south of the entrance to Blanchflower Park. Dating to around 1940, it was built to house electrical components for Belfast's trolleybus network, specifically serving route No. 25, which was extended to this section of the road sometime between 1940 and 1948.

The pillar is a tall cabinet standing approximately 1.3 metres in height with a rectangular plan of about 0.75 metres by 0.5 metres. It is designed in a broadly Classical style with panelled faces topped by an oversailing cushioned cap with a hipped shallow-pitched roof. Both of the longer east and west faces are fitted with hinged doors bearing the arms of the City of Belfast. A small round opening near the top of the north face possibly once accommodated a conduit where a pole attached to overhead cabling may have been positioned.

Service pillars such as this housed electrical equipment and served as junction points for the power supply or as isolators for electrically powered transport systems. Legislation required such isolators to be positioned every half mile along a route; their function was to cut the electricity supply to a particular section of line, allowing engineers to work on it while the rest of the network continued to operate. This pillar remained in service until the trolleybus network was decommissioned in 1968.

The pillar is largely intact externally, though its original green paint finish has largely weathered away, leaving only fragmented patches. It is cast iron throughout and represents one of only three such service pillars known to survive in Belfast, making it one of the very few remaining structures associated with the city's trolleybus system. It is also notable as an attractive example of mid-twentieth-century street furniture in its own right.