Awesome find! Looks like this is in good nick too

Was very pleased how it turned out after a good clean with several antiseptic wet wipes and a final wipe down with a kitchen paper towel I remember seeing a shorter version in the local Budgens store near my parents house when I was fourteen but sadly that fixture is gone like the store was demolished and rebuilt in 2013

Great find always liked T8 fittings with square style lampholders. Cleaned up nicely too

Yeah it's always nice when they come up so good with just a quick clean These remind me of those T5 Arlec fittings Homebase sold a while back.

I saw some Ring fluorescent fixtures listed on FB marketplace that had similar square shaped lampholders like the GEC Speedpack but they got sold and seller was based in Norwich which is miles away from Reading

Cool, I like some of the Ring stuff, they had some nice fittings in their 90's fluorescent ranges

Remember the Ring 36W T8 fluorescent fixture that was in the main bathroom of my parents house? That's my most favourite Ring fixture and it was installed I believe couple of years before I was born until it got taken down in 2017 during the bathroom renovation - it is now safely stored inside my shed

Yeah I think that one popped up randomly on LG the other day actually Good that you have still got it stored safely too, we used to have one in the kitchen too, I expect they came from B&Q or Wickes as those were a common 90's DIY store fitting

A lovely designed 90s era fluorescent fixture it was I was so happy that I was able to save it and store it I love its noisy ballast and the electronic starter that was fitted to it

The choice of fitting used for the refurbishment of the college I was at in early 90s. Single speedpaks in corridors and twins in classrooms and labs with the prismatic diffusers that completely covered the fitting. All replaced again sadly with, you've guessed, LED.

If they were installed in the early 1990s which is I presume like 5 years before I was born - then the Speedpak T8 must have been introduced in the mid to late 1980s and great pity that LED has trashed them in your college, RobTDCI

They were certainly in the RS catalog in the late 80s, along with paragraphs of information as was always the case for RS. The refurbishment began in 1989. It was a 1960s building and the fittings replaced were 5ft grey sided Atlas Atlantic or 8ft foot for labs and workshops. There wasn't enough money to refurbish the whole building, so some floors remained as a 60s time capsule well into the 2000s. Being an educational building it had a hard life so the parts of the building not refurbished in the early 90s would have been very run down by that time.

The Atlas grey sided fluorescent fixtures are on my next list for my collection after success of getting this GEC Speedpack and the Europa. Now it's the grey sided fluorescent fixtures I rly want to get, just have to keep searching on FB marketplace and wait till the car boot sales resume. I'm actually so over the moon with these 2 GEC fluorescent fixtures I've got from yesterday- especially that Philips daylight tube was a nice bonus as daylight or cool white halophosphor is my absolute favourite. It's actually a fortunate situation when financial limits result in relics being preserved, Rob. Amazing how the Speedpacks remained until LED came along

Pretty rare now are the old Atlas fittings. At lease I think they were Atlas, though they actually had Couteney Pope style lampholders with Opal diffusers and black endcaps, looking very dated alongside the T8 fittings of the time. For that matter, you did well to get this speedpak, they never seemed to be that common.

@RobTDCI: I'm mostly after the Thorn Poppack style ones, not the ones with Courtney Pope style holders with black endcaps like what Danny has on his setup - just have to keep the hard searching on FB and other sites. Thanks I am actually thrilled to get a T8 GEC made fluorescent fixture and the Europa within 22 min drive away from my parents house