Summer BBQs & Jingle Bells: A History of ‘Coronet Lanterns’

*** You can buy our Low Voltage LED safety converted, fully checked and tested sets here ***

People say you rarely realise at the time, the last occasion you do something, the ‘something’ being either incredibly trivial, or profound. As this is RCV and nominally a ‘summer holidays, BBQs and xmas parties’ type post, we’ll stick to trivial, thanks! And so it was in 2005 (o.n.o.) that I casually ordered some Coronet Lanterns (by then known as Coronet Light Sets and lastly Starlet Lanterns) from TLC Electrical, my go-to place for electrical bits and bobs. No sponsorship, this is a genuine recommendation for no payback!

Coro-what? If you haven’t the feintest idea what I’m on about, I bet you might recognise these lights without knowing the name, when I show you this picture;

This isn’t even every iteration, which is the confusing thing about these lights that were manufactured with few changes for nearly 40 years, at least 20 in the UK and overseas to the exact same pattern for another 10-15, maybe more. Not available in the shops, were commercial versions with 20 and 50 lamps, which were commonly seen at pubs etc…

The lanterns themselves are quite large, 150mm or so in total (these are the later era ones without screws on top) with a clip-in basket holding an opaque coloured ‘bucket’ insert (available in 4 fruity flavours, and white) all of course using high-impact injected plastic. And yet they definitely have a real charm.

The lamps are simple, screw in SES (Small Edison Screw) or E14 types, commonly known as Pygmy lamps. You’ll have seen something similar in a fridge light. About 10-15w usually, and you can fit LED equivalents. It all runs off mains voltage of course. They aren’t waterproof, more water resistant.

Actually, above was the newer version, the original was just solid plastic and as people often put higher wattage lamps in than they should, so they are often brittle when you see them today. You can also see they’ve got screws on the top (‘wet’) part of the festoon, which isn’t ideal. Later versions were plastic capped, then more like rubber.

I don’t know when production started, but the earliest boxes referred to ‘Coronet Marketing’ (no actual registered company name as such) but gave the address and telex number for Fisher Karpark Industries, a.k.a FKIat their ‘Gratrix Works’ in Halifax. Remember that name, as it’s important and I’ll mentioning it a lot later (if you get that far). FKI moved to said Gratrix Works (an old textile mill) around 1977. This does suggest that this was a little business unit of its own at FKI, although there was never a single reference to this division in their annual reports that I could find, nor of their eventual divestment from Halifax to Dereham (more on that later). Although they were fairly large even then that this was just another product line, a number of other divisions and product lines were mentioned.

Understandably early versions don’t have barcodes either; I think that this (going by the lamp design, the fact these boxes are always the tattiest when found 2nd hand, etc…) is the first release;

and then this…

Now add back a logo or two… The ‘New Improved Design’ refers to the removal of the screws on the top of each lantern in this case.

Then there were all the alternatively branded versions, like this;

Even though the Halifax factory was making lighting and some other consumer products until it closed in 2004, when FKI took on Norfolk based Metamec Clocks and Lighting in 1985, this product line followed, at first still as FKI;

So now we have a barcode, hmm, what next?

Looks like we’re going under the Metamec name now. Maybe this was because FKI seemed like an increasingly strange brand to see on consumer goods when the vast majority of their business was industrial products and heavy engineering. (Although outdated and not entirely accurate, this wikipedia page gives a flavour of late 80s onwards FKI activities).

But Metamec passed into the hands of Ross Consumer Electronics around 1993, but it looks like some strange company with an odd ‘E’ logo bought out the lighting range around 1992. Who they?

No design changes yet, but no doubt by 1994 as legislation required, that 13A plug was now included.

Ah, finally a proper closed box that can be posted and won’t get broken when it’s sat on a shelf in Argos! I wonder what happens if we scan that barcode? Surely it can’t still be registered?

Oh! Well, of course that ‘E’ was the old Eterna Lighting Logo. And clearly buying the range off of Metamec was a Big Deal for them, since they devoted an entire page and many entries to it in the annual report from head of group Denmans plc.

By now we’ve got CE compliant cable (gone is the old domestic internal 0.75mm² 2-core) and a UK regulation compliant moulded plug. The cable is no longer UK made though; I do wonder if even now the manufacturing had been offshored but the lanterns themselves are clearly the original (2nd generation / 1980s onwards) design. ‘British Made’ no longer features on the boxes.

I can’t tell you where the old Eterna factory was as it was never recorded on any obvious document, and only the head office was ever given on any paperwork or boxes I’ve managed to find. As you can guess, today manufacturing of all their products (traditionally these companies still knock up a few Emergency Lighting ‘conversions’ in house with a staff of about 2) is overseas.

This was not the end of the lights though.

Now based on a likely already-existing festoon string, with even thicker cable, and seemingly available exclusively though TLC-direct (a UK electrical wholesaler) 10 and 20 lamp strings were available from around 2001 to 2015, by the end only the 20 lamp versions were available. The Wayback Machine shows that the page disappeared around 2015 – TLC is a very ‘traditional’ website (which I think is great) and the structure had otherwise not changed in all that time, so when a page disappears it usually just means something is simply no longer available.

I bought one around 2005, which I still have today. Now it looks as if no-one, even in China, is producing these lantern sets, although mains powered festoons are widely available so it is not just the case that LEDs have taken over.

That’s the end of our story, but here’s a quick rundown of what else was available in the same era, starting off with sets that looked similar in style;

And there were a lot of other UK and EU made sets available in the same era, with different designs;

We had several of those DETA sets, again made in France, when I was younger!

Below is a manufacturer that, uniquely, still seems to be going, (George) Turnock Ltd.

Remanoid, who made these lights ended up as part of Bunzl who lumped it in with pond pumps etc… and now don’t seem to be around at all even doing that. (I’m not sure if Permanoid who still seem to exist as a cable company were ever related? It seems an oddly similar name.)

More Ring lights below;

And more…

Lampways set;

Odell party lights;

And the ultimate tribute perhaps, even Konstsmide did a mini version;

Finally, a reminder that it was worth UK companies making these types of products back then for various reasons including trade protection from EU and further overseas, have a look at the pricing from this 1980s SMITHS infosheet;

Part 2: The Manufacturer’s History in Slightly Drawn-out Detail

(This all seemed a lot more interesting when I was doing probably a bit too much research into it when we were quiet just after Christmas. Probably a good example of the chase being more fun that the catch. Ah well.)

Despite the many brand names these lights were sold under, they were all made by one company until 1993; FKI or Fisher Karpark Industries. Some sources, apparently incorrectly, say the company was founded in the 1920s, but Ian Fisher started the relevant division in 1957 as Process Units Ltd., which is where the Halifax connection started. The top product was a ‘Fisher Control’ which was pretty much a controller for commercial laundry machines.

1959 saw a tragic car accident which took the life of the company founder. But Margaret Fisher carried on with the business and by 1960 Process Units had been acquired by Chadburn Controls, a ships telegraph company – though not the dash-dot sort, more like this and the picture below, the linked company appearing to have a connection to the original Chadburn.

This acquisition meant moving to a new factory at Luddendenfoot near Halifax (still pretty much as-was externally, have a limited look around here) from 1964. The number of product lines started to grow.

1966 brought the launch of the product that probably gave the company its biggest boost yet – not to mention that it is one of few parts of the company still trading with almost the same type of goods from a similar location to the one it was founded. This was a photocell, a device that turns on and off amenity lighting (often public streetlamps) as the natural light changes. Whilst not in itself a new invention, an inexpensive, reliable compact unit designed to fit into a common socket on top of various different manufacturers lamps was– until then councils then had relied on expensive, complex timeclocks that needed constant adjustment or even winding up!

Another thing happening at the same time was the exponential growth of the UK motorway network, whether under construction or in planning, and roadside devices such as those to detect and alert for fog were likely a good profit generator for the company. 200,000 such photocells had been produced by 1970, with it seems surprisingly little competition.

By 1969 the company was beginning to look attractive to others with a similar or complimentary line, which was realised with an acquisition by the Boston Group who owned Parking Meters of Aylesbury. Both these businesses are completely lost to history at least with regards to internet research, but the meter business was transferred to Luddendenfoot and the company name changed to Fisher Controls Ltd. and Car Park Meters. Margaret Fisher was still actively involved in Fisher Controls, which now had a diverse product line despite the focus on photocells. By 1973, the Boston Group connection was history via an MBO, and with the company now back under private management, Margaret Fisher retired the year after.

Being the 1970s, the company did something that very few contemporaries would do now; they expanded from B2B (Business to Business) to B2C (Consumer facing) sales, getting involved in developing consumer products, firstly changing their name in 1971 to Fisher Karpark Industries, or FKI. The FKI name was often prefixed to any businesses acquired from this date, and was also to endure long after the business unit described above – the founding part of the empire – was divested.

Various types of manufacturing were entered into, including water valves, and following acquisition in 1975 of a business known as ‘IRL’ in Bath, probably best known to motorists of a certain vintage for their battery chargers. The model below already shows the new FKI logo and Halifax address, but it’s otherwise identical to the original.

Production of these was soon moved to Halifax, and I can remember Stothert and Pitt (another once Bath based business) using the other IRL product line – low voltage lighting – in their own products. But the Coronet Lanterns business did not come from IRL, it had been quietly started within FKI around this time.

“What about the lanterns though!?” you are screaming, if you haven’t already gone to sleep. (I admit again quite openly that this topic felt a LOT more interesting in the planning than it does now written down, but hey-ho, I’ve started so I’ll finish). After probably the mother of all tidy ups and clear outs, Gratrix Lane finally closed in 2004, now housing of course, and was the given address on the vast majority of the boxes.

Metamec was a watch manufacturer in the second half of the 20th century and was based in Dereham, Norfolk, England, the name “Metamec” derived from “metallurgy and mechanics”. In 1947, a small factory in East Dereham, Norfolk, began producing watches under the Metamec name. The Metamec factory was a branch of Jenkins Productions which made furniture and had won a contract with the Ministry of Defense to make ammunition boxes.

Huge quantities of timber, brass and steel were used in the production of these boxes, but when the war ended the contract was revoked and so Jenkins Productions, which had now been renamed “Jentique”, found itself with a lot of scrap wood and brass, surplus to his normal needs. Captain Bernard A. Smart decided to make clocks using some of these surplus materials. Within a few years the factory was producing 25,000 watches a week and became the largest watch manufacturer in Britain. The ‘Jentique’ factory was on the opposite side of the road to Metamec, but this company appears to have ceased trading around the 1970s and the factory long demolished before the Metamec one encountered a similar fate.

The Dereham factory employed up to 700 people, producing 350 different clock designs, in the 1950s and early 60s. A wide variety of wall clocks, mantel clocks, trolley clocks, alarm clocks and clocks were made, powered by winding, mains electricity and batteries. In the early days, many of the movements were bought from other manufacturers in Germany, France and Scotland, and even from their competitor Smiths Clocks. Later, quartz movements were used.

The Metamec company declined in the 1980s due to the advancement of the German clock industry and imports from the Far East. Metamec went into receivership in December 1984 and was purchased in January 1985 by FKI of Halifax, who continued to use the name until 1993. Metamec was briefly run by Ross Consumer Electronics until its closure in 1994, at which point it appears the clocks faded into history, but there had already been a reprieve for our favourite festoon lights…

And it seems these Coronet lights actually were actually manufacturedin Dereham too, not just distributed from the address – because when it all went wrong again in 1994, Eterna Lighting mention moving the production equipment from the site in Dereham. Yes, within a very short time, it was goodbye Dereham, and hello, ‘somewhere else’.

Metamec also made a few other novelty lights, including a range of pond lighting, though before writing this the only product I’d ever found is the Christmas lights.

Since first publishing this, I’ve also now found the original FKI / Metamec Mini Coronet Lights, which are a different shape to our Mini Coronet Lights;

So what happened? Initially Ross**, at that time having both a Novelty Clocks and £8m Chinook Helicopter contract capable electronics division (oh, how I’d love BAE Systems to diversify into producing candy floss machines, after all Mikoyan-Gurevich churned out a food processor or two when jet orders were slack) had bought Metamec with the wholesome intention of diversifying their timekeeping division.

But just as quickly, rumbles in their other businesses meant that the clocks had to go. Along with a lot of other stuff. First they moved clockmaking to Southampton, then bought some other company called ‘Cascade’ which seemed to specialise in importing travel irons and the like, then finally to Bolton where it faded away with the entire Consumer Electronics division in 1995.

No mention of the lights ever though – because, it seems that the lighting had actually been hived off early, to Eterna Lighting, a lighting manufacturing division of Denmans. If you’ve not heard of Denmans, you probably live somewhere in the north (excepting the rather remote satellite branch of Liverpool – must have had a relative there?), and now they are part of Rexel, and no longer make anything themselves. But back then they definitely did.

And then as above, all future manufacturing was at unknown factories overseas, probably from the late 90s onwards. They stopped being sold around 2009.

What of the Metamec factory? It played the usual long game of cheaply subdividing itself into smaller units for a few years until the required planning permission arrived for a housing estate.

That fancy looking original building at the bottom centre is the only bit to survive, but here’s a bit of the factory while it was split into business units, just days before demolition.

*I’m not sure what the current status of Lumo is; you can still just about see the products in dealers and online, but the website is dead as a dodo.

(Some online photos from the Lumo production line, which may no longer be in operation)

**”You won’t believe what this FTSE listed company looks like now!“. Yes, Ross Group plc really is (or appears, was) now a vehicle for some highly speculative aquatic activities involving chitosan and the likes.

Note: I was really struggling to get anything online for the history of the companies behind these lights, there is literally nothing you’ll find in normal searching (and FKI themselves didn’t ever seem to publish an official history) and although churning through Companies House confirmed a few things, the complicated structure over the years made it very tricky here too. Thankfully the division of once global giants FKI-Babcock that made these lights was for historical reasons always kept quite separate, and survives mostly in one piece to this day as Lucy-Zodion; Zodion formerly being abrand name used by FKI Cableform. Lucy-Zodion published a handy history a few years ago, which helped a lot.