Revo Precinct.

For as long as I remember, my earliest memories of street lighting has been the unique and now very elusive Revo Precinct, otherwise known as the Revo Birmingham, due to being a specially commissioned design for the city. Believed to have been designed by a Birmingham council engineer, the design featured a unique lantern comprising of a enormous 28" diameter canopy mounted atop a bracket not too dissimilar to the Sol-e-tern, an enclosed bowl setup featuring a Prefect bowl, and a column featuring the Birmingham city crest on the door, a single ladder arm, a stepped shoulder into the shaft and a colour combination of a maroon base and old English white shaft and lantern. They were installed in their droves, every side road, every footpath had these signature lanterns. If you saw this combo, you knew you were in the city. 2009 however saw the beginning of the end for these iconic lanterns, as the then newly designed LED lantern, the WRTL Stella, began to be rolled out en masse, wiping them out in their thousands. Today only a tiny percentage of the original numbers exist, I would like to try and save more of these before they're wiped out completely.

After searching around for an example since the day I started collecting, a contact came up trumps with an intact example, however to my surprise, it was a Phosco made Precinct, which completely threw the lineage of these lanterns into question. After piecing together what we knew, it turns out when Revo ceased trading, Phosco bought the design of the lantern and column, and made some small tweaks. Most noticeable, the lamp area isn't centred over the spigot, and the column now omitted the stepped shoulder and later the city crest on the door. Whilst I was over the moon with this lantern, I still wanted a genuine Revo made example.

The example you see here is a Revo example, it was installed in a garage complex, and overall its condition is extremely good considering its about 65 years old, a fitting age for retirement. The lichen growth on the top has protected the fibreglass over the years, meaning when the colour change happened and everything went to poo brown, the canopy wasn't painted, meaning I've been able to positively identify the original colour. Restoration will include a new bowl, any seized screws freed, and a respray back to original colours. Overall, an extremely satisfying end to a search I've been conducting for almost 10 years.