What is this?

Seen this at a few sites and always wondered what it is? Looks like a headless lamp post?

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Little+Neston,+N...

Does it have a mesh cowl on top? It could be a sewer vent pipe.

Methane ventilation pipe, where houses were built on a former tip ?

There was a programme on TV a few months ago about a whole street having to be compulsary purchased as methane levels were so high in the houses, despite the vent pipes. This one looks simillar to those.

If it was the same programme I saw then they gave the residents a choice of either selling their houses to the council or getting it fixed. All but one of them agreed to sell in the end.

Think it was a programme about local government and the work they do on one week day morning.

Probably not on a former tip ... the brick building to the right is a BT exchange and has been around for quite a while.

We agree it is a vent pipe, the other possibility is that it is venting BT ducts that could be picking up gases from further afield and ensuring they do not reach the exchange.