Thorn Beta 79 Lantern Installations
A side-entry only lantern, the Thorn Beta 79 was a 50W-100W SON-T or 80W-125W MBF/U lantern. The gear was mounted inside, underneath the rear access door on the underside of the lantern. Early versions of this lantern were of fully-aluminium construction, whereas later versions were fitted with fibreglass canopies; easily identifiable by their white colour.
Shuttington
Meanwhile, in a nearby village called Shuttington, Beta 79s line the roads, accommodating for most of the street lamps. A considerable amount are on hockey stick columns, while the others are mounted onto telegraph poles. They run a mix of 50W and 70W SON. They are all also fitted with radio nodes instead of photocells.
This Beta 79 has a post-top adaptor.
It also has industrial tape holding the gear compartment shut.
This installation at night:
There are a couple of telegraph pole-mounted installations.
The same installation at night:
Just opposite the last installation on it's pole bracket, is this 5m hockey stick column supporting a THORN Beta 79 with a bowl held on by electrical tape.
Tamworth
Thorn Beta 79s are commonly used here on private lots. This first example runs 50W SON-T and is mounted on a 3m column in a private car park. It has a Zodion SS2 photocell. As you can see, the 3m mounting height hasn't done it any favours for the lantern. It is covered in bird muck and cobwebs, and I'd imagine the gear is infested with spiders!
This doesn't stop the lamp from shining brightly at night-time though! (Very brightly considering it's mounting height, though this was taken as it warmed up)
Another privately owned lantern, this one wall-mounted on an outreach bracket (Again in Two Gates Industrial estate). There did used to be more of these here, however they were replaced with LED floods leaving this one as the last survivor.
