ARP Hailwood & Ackroyd Miner's Lamp With Blue Glass

10/4/2018

Whilst I was at a boot fair in Abergavenny, a dealer in militaria showed me what he said was an ARP miner's lamp made by Hailwood & Ackroyd that had blue glass fitted. He said that these were manufactured during the war and placed on gas leaks during air raids. The blue glass stopped them being seen from altitude.

"The Air Raids Precaution Department of the Home Office discovered in the tests carried out at Bedford that Aircraft flying at 2,000 feet cannot spot dime blue lights", Flyer Magazine.

I checked this up online and indeed a couple of sites mentioned this information. The site said that over 100,000 such lamps were offered for sale during the war at 3/6d. Some had red glass. I was initially sceptical of this until I found more about them online. There is allegedly an advertisement for this lamp from the war and I would be most interested to see it.

3 Comments

Phil

3/26/2019 21:37:32

All this is true! I was apprenticed to H&A in the 1970s and acquired one of these lamps (which I still have). One of the old guys in sales told me about the lamps being re-worked with blue glass during the war. It was a boost for the company because the original lamps were leased to the coal mines, not sold. Around the time of the war they were all coming back from lease because electric lighting was coming in and the blue glass versions were sold, thereby getting rid of unwanted stock. By the way, they cannot be lit without proper (fire safe) filling and lighting equipment - again leased, not sold!

Steve Robinson

4/30/2020 11:20:18

I have had one of these lamps for many years and often wondered about it’s usage. Do they have any value?

Website Owner

4/30/2020 11:23:56

They have sold on eBay over the past few years at prices between £40 to £80.

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ARP Hailwood & Ackroyd Miner's Lamp With Blue Glass

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