Richardson Candle Wall Mounted Lamps Attached to 16, 19, 24, 27, 35 and 38 Trinity Street Cambridge, England

Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

During the first half of the C20 Cambridge's street lighting was predominantly still run on gas. However, by the mid 1950s the high price meant that it was an inefficient way of lighting the City's streets, and the City Council looked towards the adoption of an electric solution to replace its pre-war stock.

A trial scheme was set up whereby manufacturers were invited to exhibit their available models in King's Parade and around the Market Square. Two manufacturers were short-listed, British Thomson Houston (BTH) and REVO Electrical Company. The lamps displayed by BTH were all carefully engineered solutions although rather intrusive, while those by REVO, which included the REVO Festival - a slim tubular, column mounted lamp, were more sympathetic to the character of the historic city. However, the trial was considered to be unsuccessful, and most of the lamps were deemed to be unsuitable for Cambridge. Rather than choosing an 'off-the-peg' design from a catalogue, the City Surveyor decided to approach the Royal Fine Art Commission for expert advice and guidance, which suggested the well-known architect, Sir Albert Richardson.

The employment of an architect or industrial designer to design street lighting was generally unheard of until the architect Grey Wornum was commissioned to redesign Parliament Square in the early 1950s, including the street lamps. The design, a modern interpretation of the existing gas lamp, was immediately successful and was adopted throughout Westminster.

As well as being an architect, Albert Richardson was also president of the Royal Academy and loathed modern street lighting. It is said that he became particularly alarmed by the installation of a concrete street lamp, one of his particular hates, outside his home in Ampthill in 1957, describing it as a monstrosity. In the same year he was commissioned to design the new street lighting for Cambridge.

Sensitive to the strong perpendicular lines of the Cambridge townscape, including the iconic King's College chapel, Richardson took the REVO Festival lamp as his inspiration to produce a simplified, more slender model with smoother lines and less embellishment. In a speech in Cambridge in 1957 he said, 'The lighting in a city should be regulated by the city itself, by the condition and formation of the streets, by the buildings and houses and certainly with regard for vistas and silhouettes.' REVO were commissioned to produce the Richardson Candle exclusively for Cambridge. Only 120 of these lamps were manufactured in total and it never appeared in REVO's catalogue.

The Candles were limited to the City's historic core. 56 of the Candles were wall mounted and installed along the narrow roads of Saint John's Street, Trinity Street, Silver Street, Market Street, Petty Curry and sections of Sidney Street. The other 64 Candles were column mounted and could be found along Bridge Street, Sidney Street, the Market Place, Peas Hill, Benet Street and Trumpington Street.

The candles soon became accepted as part of Cambridge's historic street scene and were a talking point for residents and visitors alike. Despite some of the columns being damaged by traffic, and pressure to replace them for a more efficient modern system of street lighting during the late C20, about half of the original installation of Richardson Candles survive in the city centre, outliving their originally intended 25 year longevity.