Pylon of the Month – October 2026

The start of the academic year is always very busy and so September slipped by pylonless. October’s Pylon of the Month will hopefully make up for that. It was drawn by a colleague whilst out walking near Northmoor, just to the west of Oxford. Here it is in the wild: My trusty friend, the Open Infrastructure Map, tells me that this is a pylon on the National grid, Cowley – Seven Springs 400 kV line. The middle cross arm being longer than the ones above and below also, I think, identifies it as an L6 pylon rather than an L2, although to be sure I’d need to know whether or not the cables are bundled in fours (quads). If you too want to play the “is it an L2 or an L6 pylon” game when next out in the countryside then you need to bookmark this Telcontar webpage. Moving on from the nerdery of pylon spotting, I’ll briefly revisit a topic I’ve written about before – pylons in 20th centrury art & literature. The first depiction of a pylon in the UK is usually considered to be by Tristram…