Show Me The Way To Go Home

Gas lamps might sound like relics belonging to the past or the land of Narnia, but look closely and they are still illuminating our streets with their warm glow, reveals Harry Wallop

- Harry Wallop

IN Westminster, 4, Carlton Gardens— a short walk up the Mall from Buckingham Palace—is one of those rare historic buildings in London: a double Blue Plaquer. Home to Lord Palmerston in the 1840s (before he became Prime Minister), it also sheltered Charles de Gaulle and his government in exile during the Second World War. William Gladstone was also briefly a resident, but, somehow, doesn’t merit the distinctive English Heritage plaque. It’s quite a trio.

During the day, with vans making their deliveries and office workers on mobile phones, it can be hard to feel the historic atmosphere in this little corner of the city— but wait until dusk. Then, you can be transported back in time, thanks to the wonder of Carlton Gardens’ gas lamps.

If you look carefully at the lamp posts on this grand old street, you can see the royal cipher of George IV picked out in gold against the black base, as heavy and solid as an obelisk. It’s not only the posts and lanterns that are close to 200 years old, it’s the technology inside them, too. The 20th century and the electric revolution have passed by this street—these lamps are still gas-powered.

You may think this street is a museum piece. It isn’t. London has 1,480 gas-powered lamps still in operation, across the Royal Parks, around the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and stretching through the West End into Islington in the north and Bromley-by-Bow in the east.

Further afield, if you look hard enough, you can find pre-Victorian ingenuity still illuminating the streets in Cambridge, Nottingham, York (near the Minster), Edinburgh and, most notably, Malvern.