Steve P wrote:

As the whole estate is fed by underground supply how come neighbours
were OK, I got 110V and the street lights didn't work at all?

Typically, adjacent house are on different phases - so a fault which
affects just one phase (at your substation) will najjer the supply to
roughly every third house. I don't know how in practice streetlight
supplies are taken from the local substation - p'raps someone who does
will pipe up real soon now ;-)