Fire Now Let's Find The Horses (10 January 1975)
One day about 50 years ago Bletchley fire Brigade were bowling along in all their glory to a farm fire at Shenley Brook End.
The outfit comprised a brightly burnished steam pump on solid-rimmed wheels, manned by a brass-helmeted crew and towed by an old Fiat motor car.
This arrangement was quite an improvement on the former horse-drawn days and the brigade – all part-time retained men – had turned out smartly enough.
When they had got out in the country between Fenny and Shenley, however, the captain, Mr Frank Howard, had a sudden thought.
“How much steam have we got?” he asked of the engineer, Mr John Brookes. Mr Brookes consulted the pressure gauge. “Hardly any,” was his disconcerting reply.
What to do? Keep going to Shenley, there to wait ingloriously until steam had been got up? Or stop now, get steam up and then make a more prestigious arrival at the scene of the fire?
Captain Howard decided to stop now. Anyone about must have been puzzled at the spectacle. But steam was got up and when the brigade finally dashed on to the scene it was to the cheers rather than the jeers of the villagers.
As good luck would have it, the fire was in a hay-barn at Mr Powell’s farm and this was right opposite the village pond, which was promptly brought into use as the water supply.
“It was quite a good fire,” confides the 85-year-old Mr Howard, with an air of now-it-can-be-told. Mr Howard was a member of the brigade for about 20 years and was captain for some years at the latter end of that period.
“When I first joined, the steam pump was drawn by a pair of horses,” he says. “Normally these pulled the council’s two dustcarts. If a fire call came in daytime, we had to run round the town for them, unhitch them from the carts and run them to the fire station in Church Street before we could get on with the rest of the job. At night the horses were kept stabled behind the old Bletchley Road council offices.
“Later – after the dustcarts – the council arranged for the use of the two horses of Mr Bramley, the coal merchant, who lived down by Rowlands. There was usually only one horse to seek then.
“And finally, we became motorised through the use of the old Fiat.”
Fenny’s fire brigade were created shortly before the formation of the urban council in 1895 and were one of the assets taken over by that body. The call to Shenley was answered under a long-standing arrangement whereby the brigade attended fires not only in the town but also in all the villages within five miles, by virtue of small annual contributions on their part to the Fenny rates. The brigade had a captain, a lieutenant, an engineer and nine firemen.
The total cost to the local rates for the six months from March to September in 1908 was estimated at only £46 14s 6d. Taking into account all differences in money values which have since occurred, this must have been a remarkably cheap service. But don’t run away with the idea that it was necessarily cheap and nasty. The Shenley episode was noteworthy only because it was so untypical of the rest. The members served with pride.
“Charles Warren was captain for a long time,” says Mr Howard. “Then James Garner, then William Clarke, who was caretaker at the Bletchley Road schools, then myself, and then John Brookes, who had been the engineer.
“The police used to come and knock us up. Later we had bells installed.
“We had some biggish fires, including one at Walter Warren’s printing shop in Aylesbury Street where Mrs Heley’s café is now and where the old North Bucks Times was printed. The fires came in spasms. Some seasons were bad for hay-barn fires caused by ‘spontaneous’ combustion. But we never went to chimney fires – they were too small for us!”
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