Re: Re: Dublin Street Lighting

Lovely things, they look like they’re carved from timber!

Just on the matter of the c.1903 swan neck posts erected in Dublin city centre, I hadn’t realised until looking very closely that these posts are the same posts as used for the 1892 arc-lamps as shown below – they were simply re-headed with new lamps on top!

Hence their rather cumbersome top-heavy character.

The only ones to survive in the city today are a handful of posts on Harcourt Street, mixed in amongst later early electrics and repros.

So because the arc lamps lined all the principal streets, so too did the replacement swan necks – from Henry Street…

…to Grafton Street…

…to the corner of the Green (with later attachment).

(and ship building with steel windows).

The Grafton Street picture is from around 1940, so the swan necks possibly survived as late as the early 60s. The only slight sticking point in all of this is that there’s a larger version of this post in the Merrion Square park, which possibly hints at a new set being made for the swan necks, but that’s hardly likely. It’s reasonable to assume that the old posts were pragmatically retained and simply re-headed c.1903. If this is the case, then the post on the top of Cork Hill mentioned in the paving thread astonishingly survives from 1892!

@Devin wrote: