Purpose Of Metal Pillars...

[TommyC]

I live too many hours in an office, so I know I'm quite badly out of touch - but I've noticed repeatedly over the past 6 or 8 years the sudden appearance of large and very tall metal pillars, usually semi-hidden behind railway station fences, or in fenced-off waste-ground, etc - but in some places in the open, on pavement verges too. These things are rock-solid, simple, completely featureless, polished gun-metal grey vertical pillars, a good bit wider than most lampposts, but with absolutely no cables, lights, fixings, devices, working parts, cameras, or anything else at all - simply a very tall, closed, "silent", anonymous metal pillar. I'm sure the overall height is at least 40 feet - much taller than streetlamps - but as they have absolutely no features at all, I think most people simply don't notice them.

To me the most curious feature is that a long way up - about 12 or 15 feet up - the diameter of the thing suddenly widens by about 3 inches all the way round, remaining that secondary diameter the rest of the way up. But on top there is nothing - no antennae, no dishes or receivers, no aerials of any description, no cameras - simply nothing but a large, dark, shiny, silent metal pillar - doing whatever they do in total silence, 24/7, with, as far as I know, no questions ever asked.

What are they, please ?

[maggiebee]

Masts for mobile phones?

[Buenchico]

Monopole mobile phone masts:
https://legacy.pedroc.co.uk/

[retrocop]

Cleopatra's babees.

[Zacs-Master]

It’s MI6 keeping tabs on us all (well, that’s what you WANT to hear, isn’t it).

[Atheist]

Tommy; I think they are nothing to worry about, just some simple modern technological item. If you're badly out of touch, are you perhaps giving them too much attention? I wouldn't worry about them. Don't endow them with strange qualities like 'gun-metal', 'silent', 'anonymous' , etc. Best wishes.

[Baldric]

UFO tethering/recharging posts.

[Baldric]

Possibly ^^^^

[1ozzy]

Dogs toilets

[douglas9401]

They're actually for parking your elephant while you nip to the shops.
They seem to really enjoy it.

[woofgang]

they make them to look like trees now. We had one of the first ones near us. https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-telephone-mast-disguised-as-a-tree-in-burley-new-forest-to-blend-in-35578333.html

[Old_Geezer]

Probably Big Brother monitoring you, masquerading as mobile phone masts (the pillars not you, necessarily).

[4candles]

Mobile Mast in Weybridge Town Centre -
http://elmbridgelibdems.org.uk/mobile-mast-in-weybridge-town-centre/