Ackroyd & Best Miners' Flare Lamps?
A friend of mine recently sent me a copy of an original
(pre 1927) Ackroyd & Best (A&B) advertising leaflet (A&B leaflet reference E -
LF1/3) which showed both cap and hand type flare or oil wick lamps. From the
wording on this advertisement these lamps appear to have been primarily aim at
sale to the mining industry. I am not sure if we are talking of the home UK
and/or overseas markets.
Cap Type Flare Lamp - A&B Ref: LFL
17 - Oil capacity 60 cc
A&B who were based at the Beacon Works in Morley near to
Leeds were well known as one of the UK's leading makers of miners' flame
safety lamps. They are less well know as being the makers of miners' carbide
type lamps also. However, I was totally unaware, as were all the UK lamp
collectors I have so far spoken to, that A&B also made oil wick type miners
lamps. Both cap mounted plus hand held types as indicated in the advert above.
The style of the
hand type A&B flare lamp has a distinctively main land European look about it
to me. So maybe this indicates that they were aimed primarily at that
market? The cap lamp type also does not look like the typical design and
proportions that were common in those used in Scotland
where this type of lamp was always very popular with those miners who worked in
none "gassy" pits.
By no means am I
an expert about such lamps but the A&B flare cap lamp looks more like those I
have seen from the coalfields of the USA. So was it also produced with that
market in mind?
Hand Type Flare Lamp - A&B Ref:
LFL 29 - Oil capacity 180 cc
Any information
about A&B flare lamps would be greatly appreciated. Can anyone provide any
photographs or dimensions from similar A&B lamps in their collections? Where were these lamp
used and when? After 1927, when A&B transformed themselves into Hailwood &
Ackroyd, did they continue to market such flare lamps? If so when did they
delete them from their product range?
Submitted By : Mark
Smith.
Date: February 2005.
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