Fire at riverside paper mill fire caused £20,000 of damage

With such combustible material inside, the fire in the mill in the village near Oxford spread rapidly and destroyed the whole building and everything inside.

The blaze occurred in 1872 when, as we have reported in previous fires at Didcot railway station in 1886 and East Hagbourne in 1659, firefighting equipment was still in its infancy – horse-drawn water pumps.

READ MORE: New play park officially opens

As soon as the mill fire was discovered at 9.20am on a Sunday, “messengers were despatched on horseback to Oxford and Abingdon for the fire engines”, according to Jackson’s Oxford Journal.

The Oxford-bound messenger arrived at 9.50 and within seven minutes, one horse-drawn engine, with four officers and eight men, set off. A second engine belonging to the brigade, with eight men, and the fire engine from Morrell’s brewery followed.

The Abingdon fire engine arrived nearly an hour after the Oxford crews – its firemen were at church when the call came.

The newspaper report continued: “By the time the engines had arrived even from Oxford, the whole building was a mass of flames. The fire spread with great rapidity and 40 minutes after it was first discovered, a great portion of the roof fell in.

“Seeing, therefore, that it was useless to attempt to save any part of the mill or its contents, the fire brigades directed their attention to the adjoining property and saved from destruction the well-known public house facing the river and a small building where machinery was stored.

“When the woodwork in the interior of the mill gave way, a great portion of the machinery fell with a tremendous crash and when the roofs fell, volumes of flames rose to a very great height.

“Within four hours, nothing was left of the mill and its contents but the bare walls and the machinery, which was greatly damaged.

“The crews of the engines worked admirably together during the day. The large masses of paper, pulp etc remained smouldering for a day or two after the fire, which is supposed to have been caused by spontaneous combustion.”

Sadly, one of the Oxford firemen, Mr R Gillman, suffered a serious leg injury.

The newspaper explained: “It appears to be a common practice for the men, when going uphill, to jump off the engine, while in motion, to relieve the horses.

“When they got to Rose Hill, Mr Gillman, in jumping off, was knocked down, the hitch wheel passing over his legs just below the knee, and the hose reel went over his thigh. No bones were broken, but his legs were so greatly injured it will be some time before he recovers.”

A worker at Sandford Paper Mill

The cost of the fire was put at more than £20,000. The day before, new machinery costing more than £4,000 had arrived at the mill.

The pictures show the mill before its closure in 1982 and machine worker Ken Hastings checking one of the drying rollers in 1974.

My thanks to historian and former fire officer John Lowe for researching the story.