Fighting Farm Fires

Herne Bay Fire Brigade were alerted in the early hours of March 27th 1900 when a large thatched barn was reported alight at Love Street Farm, Greenhill. Arriving at the scene with their horse-drawn engine, they used water from a nearby brook to prevent the blaze spreading to the farmhouse. The barn was completely destroyed. All that remained of it, according to an eyewitness, “could have been shovelled into a sack”.

Stables and outbuildings were smouldering ruins and cowsheds were burnt out. The occupants of the farm, Mr. Newport and Mr. Hudson and their families, awakened by the smell of burning, had rescued horses and cattle by releasing them from the stables. Farmers were constantly alert to the dangers of fire. Many barns were thatched and wooden outbuildings heavily coated with tar. Straw and hay, too, were inflammable. Widely scattered across rural Kent, they were once a favourite resting place for agricultural labourers or travellers on the road.

It was, in fact, a labourer, David Bean, who worked at the farm and was using the barn as sleeping quarters who was responsible for the outbreak. Waking up in the night to smoke a pipe, he accidentally dropped a lighted match, straw bursting into flames and setting his clothes on fire. Taken to Herne Bay Cottage Hospital in a dairy cart with severe burns to his head, back and legs, he eventually recovered from his injuries.

Love Street Farm (owned by my great grandfather Edward J. Pout) has long since been demolished. Later known as Standing’s Farm, it once stood in open countryside. Occupying the site today is Briary Primary School in Greenhill Road. Firemen from Herne Bay and Whitstable joined forces when they were called to Kite Farm, Swalecliffe, on the night of July 18th 1908. Here, two large haystacks were alight. The farmhouse and outbuildings were saved, using water from a pond, but the stacks, valued at £300 each, were destroyed. The cause of the outbreak was given as spontaneous combustion.

Fire fighters had another duty to perform on this occasion, when two boys who were watching the fire fell in the pond, which was 10ft deep, in the darkness. Norman Wacher and Walter Ells of Herne Bay and Waters of Whitstable jumped into the water to rescue them. One of the boys was feared dead, but was revived with artificial resuscitation and taken in a horse-drawn trap to a doctor.