Re: Re: Dublin Street Lighting

Thanks for the pics Peter. I’d seen the new posts from the bus but couldn’t make out too much of the detail. They appear to be green versions of the Bull Alley/Iveagh Trust posts installed a few years ago off Patrick Street. Extremely nice and well detailed, but criminal if they are replacing historic posts, for which there is absolutely no justification. Do you remember if there were old posts along here Peter before these went in? Perhaps (hopefully) they replaced steel posts? Certainly I remember them on the other sides, as your picture proves.

There so very few enclaves of these small historic posts left in Dublin. I sincerely hope it is not the intention to give them all this Tidy Towns treatment. Dare I even mention it for fear of generating publicity, but Mountpleasant Square in Ranelagh/Rathmines has probably the oldest posts in the entire city, with elegant simple fluted columns and Sesame Street-like curved bases. These were gas lamps, are exceptionally rare, and may date from as early as the late 1820s. If they so much as contemplate coming near these with their sanitised heritage poles…!

And sadly the concretes on Kenilworth Road are already disappearing. I had a picture of a new galvanised steel pole going in beside a concrete post, but have lost it since. Also in Crumlin village, these distinctive – if gawky – classic suburban specimens are being replaced with more catalogue homogenity, more suited to La Rambla than a quaint village street. What a crying shame.