Richardson candle

The Richardson candle lamp is a unique vertical style of electric streetlamp designed for and installed in the Cambridge in the 1950s.

According to the listings, "Cambridge is the last city in the UK to retain its own custom-designed lighting stock from the post-war period".

The design was based on the REVO Festival candle lamp, a tall tubular column-mounted lamp designed and installed in Birmingham in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain and which remained in place until the 1990, for example on Colmore Row.

After a trial which reject an off-the-shelf lamp, Richardson was commissioned in 1957, adopting a similar tall and narrow vertical design to echo the perpendicular architectural lines of many historic Gothic Cambridge buildings, but with less decoration than the Festival candle.

A bespoke order of 120 new electric streetlamps was manufactured by REVO, installed in Cambridge in the late 1950s to replace pre-war gas lamps.