Victorian electric street lamps in Oxford
The electricity generating station at Osney opened in 1892, with a central switch station at 45 Broad Street, and two small substations at King Street (now the north–south part of Merton Street) and Carfax. Initially electricity was supplied to five street lamps and eleven business premises, and by 1893 the number of street lamps had reached sixteen. On 14 October 1893 Jackson’s Oxford Journal reported:
The scheme of lighting the central part of the city by electricity has been carried into effect, and Carfax, Queen-street, Cornmarket, and Magdalen-streets, and part of High-street and St. Aldate’s are now lighted by sixteen arc lamps of 1200 candle power. Carfax clock is also illuminated by electric incandescent lamps.
Of these sixteen lamps, only two appear to remain. (There are other similar electric lamps in Oxford dating from the early twentieth century, but the earlier ones are recognizable by their much heavier fittings and their number.)
There are also many street-lights in Oxford that were originally lit by gas, and as late as 1963 there were 1,820 gas street lamps and 3,260 electric ones in Oxford. (The last gas light, in New College Lane, was ceremonially switched off in April 1979.)
Cornmarket, at the junction with St Michael's Street
This survivor is a lamp on a wall bracket fixed to 37 Cornmarket, which had been rebuilt by the 1890s and was Charles Underhill’s grocery shop. It bears the number 14 on the shield.
Below is a Historic England photograph showing this same light, photographed by Henry Taunt in 1907:
High Street, on the corner of Turl Street
The other survivor is this free-standing lamp-post (right) outside the Mitre. Its very heavy base (numbered 3) shows that it is of an early date.
Below: Detail of the same lamppost:
Some of the other lampposts that were erected in the 1890s that are now long gone can be spotted in old postcards and are shown below.
To the east of the curve the High Street (two lamppostss)
Below is a card showing one Victorian lamppost outside The Queen's College, and the other further west outside University College:
To the west of the curve in the High Street: two lampposts
One is at the entrance to St Mary's Passage, and the other to the east is outside the Old Bank:
West end of the High Street
The Historic England photograph below, taken by Henry Taunt in 1907, shows a lamppost on the right that is likely to be one of the Victorian ones:
Carfax
The postcard below shows the old lamppost at Carfax, the most important place in the city, and the base is consequently more lavishly embellished than that of the other posts and has a different top. (Another view of it can be seen in the photograph below of Queen Street.) Attached to this lamppost are fingerposts to WITNEY FARINGDON in the west and LONDON in the east. The signs pointing north and south (which would have said WOODSTOCK and ABINGDON) cannot be viewed:
Cornmarket, south-west corner
The photograph below shows a lamppost outside the Midland Bank, one of the buildings erected on the site of the main part of St Martin's Church in 1896/7. It does not look as heavy as some of the lampposts shown here, and may be a slightly later one.
Outside the Clarendon Hotel in Cornmarket
The postcard below shows another heavy old lamppost opposite Market Street and outside the Clarendon Hotel, whose proprietor seems to have been shocked initially at the amount of light it gave out. On 7 January 1893 the city council’s General Purposes Committee “considered the request of the proprietor of the Clarendon Hotel that the electric lamp opposite Market-street be extinguished after 9.30 or 10 every night, but are of opinion that the difficulties in the way of acceding to this request are insuperable”.
At the north end of Cornmarket
The postcard below shows on the right another lamppost outside 22 Cornmarket Street, which was rebuilt by W. H. Smith in 1915. In the 1890s it was occupied by the draper Charles Andrews. A pennyfarthing bicycle is parked nearby.
St Giles' south
The postcard below shows an ornate lamppost outside St John's College, near the taxi rank:
St Aldate's
This postcard shows a lamppost opposite the Town Hall, outside Nurse the Furrier:
Queen Street
The Historic England photograph below, taken by Henry Taunt in 1907, shows a Victorian lamppost on the south side of Queen Street (behind the second carriage):
That brings the total to fourtee: the other two lamps dating from 1893 were probably in Magdalen Street East and West. .