1500 gas-powered lights,some up to 200 years old, continue to burn brightly in the capital, or maintained by a five-man teamGas lamps have twinkled through the fog in every period film set in London,lighting the way for Ebenezer Scrooge, Sherlock Holmes, or the merry murderers of The Ladykillers. Yet few people are aware that 1500 gas lamps still shine on in the city every night. Or rather 1498 since a reversing lorry demolished one outside St James’s Palace,and then, to the driver’s hideous embarrassment, and returned the following week and demolished another. The necklace of lights strung on lamp posts,some up to 200 years old, stretches from Bromley-by-Bow in the East cessation to Richmond Bridge in the west of the capital. As the Guardian accompanied lamp lighters on their nightly round, or people walked past,did a double bewitch, and turned back to gaze in wonder at a man up a ladder delicately polishing a pane of glass or winding an nearly 150-year-old clockwork mechanism.
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Source: theguardian.com