February 2022

17 Buckden Roundabout February 2022 The Needingworth Fire The Needingworth Fire of 1847 Richard Storey, Secretary of the Buckden History Society Thatching was the normal roofing material in rural Britain and used back as far back as the Bronze Age. Straw or grasses were the obvious choice as it was often available locally and by far the lightest weight material available. Wheat straw was commonly used in the south of England, and reeds in East An- glia. Unfortunately, historic buildings were built in a different era without regard to fire standards. The materials they were made from are readily combustible, often incorporating fea- tures which can assist the rapid development and hidden spread of fire. The risk of fire for all communities was ever present, especially when candles were the only source of light after dark and cooking was by wood or coal. On 16th September 1847 the inhabitants of Needingworth, two miles east of St Ives, were shocked by a fire that devastat- ed their community. Of the 192 houses in the village 84 were completely consumed in the flames as well as 10 barns con- taining the grain and produce of the recent harvest. 87 families were left homeless. Despite having access to 3 three fire en- gines they proved ineffective and villagers were helpless as the flames consumed their properties. As soon as was possible, the Rector of of Holywell - cum - Needingworth, the Reverend Robert J M ’ Ghee, wrote an open letter to the parishioners: “ On Wednesday, September 15, 1847, you were all, as usual, employed about your various occupations. It was a calm and lovely evening. I was in the village about 7 o ’ clock, and con- versed with several of its inhabitants. One of the oldest of them Mrs H (oward), had been a long time very weak; and I recollect saying that it was too late: that evening, but that, please God, I should be with her on Friday, being obliged next morning to go to London for a day. Your plans of business, of farming or labour, or traffic in your little shops, or of visiting, as some of you did, your friends or neighbours at a distance from the village, were all no doubt, thought of and talked over by your fireside, as you were seated on your chairs at your tables with your evening meal spread before you, and afterwards lay down quietly to sleep, you thought little that it was the last night that so many of you were to have any use of those arti- cles of furniture, or to dwell in those habitations with which many of you had been familiar from your childhood, but that in a few hours they were to present nothing to your view but a mass of shattered fragments or of smoking ruins. ” Thursday, the 16th, arose with a very clouded sky, and seemed to threaten a storm; but you little thought how soon it was to burst on your heads, and carry with it unexpected ruin and desolation over your village, and that, from a quarter where it was impossible to imagine it could arise, and from which, when it came, it seemed a direct visitation from the hand of God. If lightning had struck every house and set it on fire, it would not have seemed to me more marked, as coming directly from His hand. There were two small cottages in the pits belonging to the poor, separated by an orchard in full bearing, from any other habitation, distant, I suppose, from the nearest almost hun- dred yards. If any one had been asked whether any danger was to be apprehended from these cottages being set on fire, I sup- pose the most timid or the most cautious person in the village, could not have expressed the slightest fear a short time be- fore. A poor half - witted girl who had been left in one of these cottages, threw out, as any one might have done, some ashes on the heap at the end of the cottage, where they were gener- ally thrown. Some unextinguished embers among these were fanned into kindling by the south - west wind, which was then blowing a storm against the gable of this cottage. Some gleaning straw was lying, at that moment, close to the ashes, and the kindling embers caught and set fire to the straw; instantly it blazed up to the roof, and communicated with the thatch of the cottage, which happened to be very dry, and in a few minutes the two cottages were in a flame. Still who could have apprehended danger from the distance of these cottages from other dwellings, and the intervening or- chard? They lay directly to windward of the village, and when the thatch on the roof became separated from its binding by the flame, the storm carried it through the trees and over the orchard, still fanning it more strongly as it flew, and blew into the thatched roofs and corn - stacks of other houses and home- steads in the village. The nearest hayrick and the nearest thatched house escaped; the wind blew the burning thatch over them to others, but in a few moments some small cottages from fire, then Mr Sharpe ’ s house and all his offices caught the flames; then old Mrs Howard ’ s house and offices and all her corn - stacks were in a blaze; and when next, on the morning of Friday I saw the habitation which I had promised to visit in the evening it was all reduced to a shapeless mass of smoking ruins. Each house, as it took fire, furnished the storm with but fresh materials for its fury, and fresh firebrands to carry further for- ward in its work of destruction. The flames raked the village from the south - west to the north - east, and the rapidity of the desolation they spread before them, was scarcely less formida- ble and unlooked for, than the havoc it carried along with it. One neighbour had not time to render a few moments assis- (Continued on page 18) The Needingworth fire map, which is orientated south - north. The fire start- ed in the property in the south - west corner of the village (top right on this map). The Blocks coloured denote the buildings burnt down. The Blocks bordered only denote Buildings damaged