Fire in Langtoft

There have been two major fires in the village in recent years and one of them destroyed the Waggon and Horses which stands on the main A15 and can be seen by everyone who passes through. There has been a hostelry here for centuries, established as a suitable stopping place for the wagon delivery services of years past, when goods were picked up and dropped off, hence its name, and it is therefore no coincidence that the present day bus stop is nearby.

The inn is sturdily built of stone with ashlar quoins and gives an appearance that it has been there for centuries but it was in fact rebuilt after the serious and fatal fire that destroyed the premises more than a century ago when the landlord was Thomas Woodward.

Soon after two o'clock on the morning of Friday 12th October 1888, smoke was seen coming from the inn by the vicar, the Rev Charles Ferrall, and Mr George Towell who lived opposite. They also heard shouts for help and soon the entire village had turned out and by the time the fire was at its height, several hundred people thronged the road outside. The inn was then thatched and the blaze had broken out at the rear of the premises and is believed to have been started when faggots were being burned on the fire and set light to an overhead beam near the hearth. There was only one occupant at the time, Mr James Jarratt, who was staying at the inn, and who managed to escape through the front bedroom window with the flames quickly spreading throughout the building. Villagers used rakes to pull away the thatch in an attempt to prevent the flames from spreading but to no avail.

A messenger was despatched to Market Deeping, two miles distant, to fetch the fire brigade which eventually arrived with a manual pump engine but their efforts were hampered by difficulties in finding an adequate supply of water. They eventually tapped into a number of nearby cisterns but by this time, the fire had been raging for an hour and the roof of the inn collapsed. Several people had congregated in the yard at the back to watch the proceedings and one of then, Samuel Deakin, climbed a ladder to reach sections of burning thatch with a rake but the chimney stack that had been left standing on its own after the roof collapsed, fell and knocked him to the ground, burying him in bricks and causing him severe injuries.

The landlord's brother, Charles Woodward, aged 30, an agricultural labourer who lived in the village, took the full force of the falling debris and was pulled from the wreckage by the police and other helpers and laid on a board but his head and body were badly mutilated and he died shortly afterwards. Mr H T Benson, a surgeon, who had been called to the scene, carried out an examination and established that his skull was fractured in several places. He had also broken his right thigh and sustained multiple fractures of the left leg and a deep wound on the front of his head about four inches long and down to the bone.

A village feast had been held at the inn the previous day and James Jarrett had been helping to clear up in the room where the fire had originated, packing away various things ready for storage. Several boxes of goods were destroyed together with a pewter pot full of coppers and some gold in a box, the takings from the previous day. Also burned were the deeds and documents of the Langtoft Friendship and Unity Club which held its meetings at the inn, together with a quantity of their cash.

An inquest was held the following day at the Royal Oak public house in Langtoft when the coroner, Mr J G Calthrop, heard evidence from the police, witnesses at the scene of the fire and the doctors who attended, and decided that Woodward had died from injuries to the head and recorded a verdict that he was accidentally killed.

The Stamford Mercury reported the following week: "Much sympathy is felt for Woodward's widow who is left with one child and whose confinement is daily expected."

FIRE LEAVES FIVE FAMILIES HOMELESS

Fire in the home today is a comparatively rare occurrence because there are few naked flames but in the days before electricity became so widespread in domestic properties, the possibility of an outbreak from candles, oil lamps, boilers and open hearths was ever present. Such an occurrence almost forty years later became one of the biggest disasters at Langtoft where five families were rendered homeless in the space of twenty minutes.

At 10.30 am on Wednesday 10th March 1926, the alarm was raised when flames were seen shooting from the thatched roof of a cottage in the main street occupied by George Day and his wife and a strong wind soon spread the blaze to the adjoining cottage. Villagers rallied to fight the fire with buckets of water but were unable to stop it spreading further to another row of thatched cottages on the other side of the road 12 yards away, one of them used as a general dealer’s shop by Mr William Howard. Ironically, he had been helping tackle the original fire when he found his own home ablaze and soon it was enveloped in a mass of flames, together with the adjoining thatched cottages occupied by Mrs Mary Rate and Miss Sarah Ann Stainsby, and within minutes, it was obvious that all five properties were doomed.

Villagers concentrated on saving what furniture and effects they could get out but in the second of the cottages, Mrs J C Whitaker, a bed-ridden lady, was carried to safety and taken to a neighbour’s house. In the event, only a small portion of the contents from each were saved. Across the road, some of Mr Howard’s furniture, including a piano, was brought out into the yard but another disaster speedily followed. The fire fighters had attempted to extinguish the flames by climbing on ladders to reach as near to the roof as the intense heat would allow but on looking down into the interior, discovered that everything inside and in the yard, including the piano, had fallen prey to the flames as the roof eventually collapsed.

The roof of Mrs Rate’s collage followed suit, destroying all of the contents although a fair proportion of the effects from Miss Stainsby’s home, the last of the three in that row to catch light, were salvaged. By the time the fire brigade from Market Deeping arrived, the situation had become hopeless but they still made attempts to extinguish the flames using water pumped from the nearby dyke to douse the smouldering mass of debris.

The cottages were rented to the tenants and owned by Mrs G Bates of Church Gresley, Burton-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, and were insured. But only two of the occupiers had their contents insured and all had to accept the generous hospitality of friends and relatives in the village. A few hours later, all that was left of the five cottages were charred walls which stood only about six feet in height.

An investigation subsequently revealed that sparks blown on to the thatched roofs by the wind from a nearby washhouse had started the outbreak. Fire so easily started, quickly consumes.

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