St John the Baptist, Holland Road, London

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  • Lighting Design: CES Lighting and Electrical Specialists
  • Photography: Nikhilesh Haval

ZTA

Church lighting specialists CES were called in to take a look at updating the old lighting scheme at St John’s the Baptist Church on Holland Road. The lighting at the Grade I listed building in west London was failing and in need of modernising. CES turned to us to supply high quality, specialised fittings made to Circular Economy principles. We jumped to the challenge and the end results are striking.

With Circular Economy in mind comes ZTA.

Both ZTA.50 and ZTA.70 feature in this project; all using various light sources, beam angles and mount methods. The core extrusion and most of the components are the same, allowing for less material wastage with a focus on quality.

The ZTA product range might be the face of our circularity approach but many of our sustainability principles have existed since our company began: modular design, build to last, build to be repairable and build quality.

2700K was the colour temperature of choice and every fitting used a high CRI LED light source, needed to highlight painted features throughout. The beautiful textured bronze finish was selected to best complement the Victorian Gothic interior and to match existing pendants in the Nave.

ReNew

Suspended high in the Nave of St John the Baptist Church in west London are eight pendants. As part of the lighting refurbishment by church lighting specialists CES, the pendants were carefully lowered, stripped and brought to us to have a new interior added.

We believe that having a serviceable product is only one half of the story. A successful Circular Economy needs the service part too, and that’s where ReNew comes in. Circularity of material use is important, so our ReNew service doesn’t just stop at our own equipment.

We used a ZTA.50 extrusion with a substantial heatsink to run a 2000lm LED module. It uses a special silicone optic that offers a full, diffused light distribution.

In addition to what’s inside the pendants, the linear beam of light that can be seen illuminating the angel corbels comes from an almost unnoticeable extra ZTA.50. This spot light sits on top of each pendant via a dedicated bracket. A very narrow 3.5º beam was used to highlight the angel’s delicate features.

In addition to our ReNew service and long-running 5 year warranty, we also pledge to support our products for a further 20 years. We call this our 25 year duty of care. It’s a promise to look after our equipment long into the future, to help them last as long as possible and to facilitate a Circular Economy approach.

Controls

St John the Baptist Church on Holland Road in London was built around 150 years ago in the 1870s. Due to its Grade 1 listing and aging pale limestone interior, it was very important in this lighting renovation that CES were able to use as much of the existing wiring as possible.

The solution? A control system that is wireless.

CES opted to utilise a Bluetooth Mesh Controls System from Xicato as, quite simply, there is no need for any controls wiring and so no requirement to add to or change the building fabric. All fittings we supplied have BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) capability. Even light sources of other manufacturers can employ the same technology by using a Xicato Intelligent Driver (XID).

As well as this huge benefit of removing any need to penetrate the church’s delicate structure, the Bluetooth control system also offers a full suite of features and functions.

CES and Xicato, supported by our own team, programmed eight preset scenes that can be chosen by church staff and volunteers to set the lighting for everyday use, predetermined services and events. In addition, a Xicato mobile phone app was configured to provide a further thirty pre-programmed scenes for use during Christmas and Easter services.

The first service using the new lighting was a huge success and we too are very pleased with the outcome.