The background
The lighting of the tower was very challenging as it is a very well-known landmark in York and the lighting had fallen into disrepair so it did not look resplendent at nigh time. The site had existing lighting points within steel cages and the new lighting had to fit in them and still give the correct shadow free illumination upon the walls. Even though the cages were not evenly spaced side to side or against the walls.
The existing power cables running up the bank from the feeder pillar had to be retained to avoid getting historic England excited but the client wanted the option of colour change for special occasions.
Lite carried out intellipower tests and a full demonstration using wide beam colorblasts.
Attendees were the city of York street lighting engineer, the PFI contractors, English heritage and the manager of the visitor centre.
The scheme was approved by all and work eventually started in October 2016 and completed in November. As part of a master plan to link the historic walls and the tower a 3G sim card and router was also installed to allow remote access to the Pharos LPC controller to upload new programs without having to go to site.
In total 14 colorblasts Gen4 with 80 degree lens were used along with 2 RGB decoscenes for the tower entrance. The castle is now back to its royal best.