A lamp post in Ealing

“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” as Joni Mitchell once warbled. This is certainly true of lamp posts if you look at the hideous modern ones and compare them with their predecessors. A few years ago a local residents pressure group succeeded in preventing the council from ripping out the last of the old Victorian lamp posts around Ealing. There is one that would have been safe in any case because it is listed. Dating from 1895, it’s on the corner of Aston Road and Woodville Road a tad north of Ealing Broadway, and it’s a beauty.

What puzzles me, though, is a photo from the LMA of the same post, taken in 1976, apparently. The cars would indicate that this is roughly correct. But the lamp design at the top is entirely different and must have been replaced at some stage in the past 35 years or so. But the existing lamp appears a much older design than 1976, so what’s going on? It seems that the old lamp was replaced with another old lamp, possibly of similar vintage.

Anyone know?

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* Hat-tip to the Queen of the Rat-run, Fiona Pretorius, aka @missysun for drawing my attention to this.