Deep in a beautiful oak wood in Hampshire we've just discovered a pile of fabulous Victorian lamp posts. They had been there, undisturbed, for twenty-five years. Lain in rows on steel girders, they had been enveloped somewhat by the rhododendrons.
 
The wood is on a beautiful private estate - the hilly grounds of a picturesque Lutyens-style house. The lamp posts had been deposited there in the 1980′s in anticipation of a plan to cut a new driveway through the trees to the house - just one of those plans that never happened.
 
Getting the crane lorry that far into the woods hadn't been as difficult as it initially looked - the ground was very dry. Getting the slings around each pair of lamp posts, involved a bit of digging. It was quite dramatic as, with each lift, the cast iron columns burst from the leaf-litter and swung up and onto the lorry. They emerged in good condition with wonderful castings - the best examples we've salvaged in years.
 
It was hot work, even in the shade of the huge trees. This far into the woods, where the rhododendrons had grown unchecked, you didn't get the benefit of any breeze on what was the hottest day of the year. The heat coming off the noisy engine whilst standing by the crane controls didn't help much!
 
There were two trips to Hampshire in the end. The weight of twenty one cast iron posts is too much for our lorry in a single load.
 
The estate is being forcibly acquired from the gentleman-owner by his bank. Now in his seventies, having built up a fabulous manufacturing business from nothing and earning many millions that afforded him such a wonderful house thirty years ago, he is losing the lot - his house and his business. The signing of a financial product that even his accountant didn't fully understand was his un-doing. You couldn't wish to do business with a more charming man. He was very pleased to get some funds out of the oak wood with our purchase of the lamp posts. The bailiffs were due the following week. Men from the bank had already pegged out the estate for the dividing of it into lots.
 
We wish him well in his last-ditch attempt to see off the liquidators and we hope to report in the near future that the situation has been corrected. It is now a vain hope that the house might be returned to him in order that he can live out his retirement looking out at the oak wood - pondering on whether cutting a new driveway through to the road would be a good idea after all.
 
Twenty one lamp posts, found in a Hampshire wood, are now available at LASSCO Three Pigeons. They are early examples - hard to find - mostly from the 1880′s: barley twists, fluted, some with diamond registration marks, some with foundry stamps including "En Avant" and "Herring & Son Ltd". There are pairs and sets among them.