The Welney Website
Fire at Tall Pines, 100 Foot Bank, 4th April 2006
page created 7th April 2006, amended/updated Tuesday, 02 November 2010|
Acknowledgements. Text based on an article in the The Cambs Times, Friday 7th April 2006, and reproduced here with kind permission. Additional information by the Webmaster. The two smaller photos are by Brian Purdy of the Cambs Times. The larger photo is copyright the Welney Webmaster |
The alarm was raised just before 8pm when the occupants, Peter Cheese and Katrina Holden, smelled smoke upstairs.
Six appliances and 46 fire-fighters from across Norfolk and Cambridgeshire attended. By the time the first fire crews arrived the roof was well alight and flames were shooting up to 20ft into the sky. It took more than an hour to control the blaze and prevent it spreading to a neighbouring property (seen below at right angles to and abutting Tall Pines) whose owners were out.
By then the roof of the two-storey property had been completely destroyed and the first floor had collapsed, but no one was injured.
Fire-fighters remained at the scene until 4am next morning, and investigators were still there on Wednesday afternoon checking for hotspots and trying to establish the cause, which is not thought to be suspicious.
A neighbour, Alan Coggins, said he was watching football on television, when he heard what he thought was an ambulance pull up next door, just before 8pm. "I looked out of the window and saw the flames, they were shooting 15 - 20 feet high. I came out to see if everyone was all right. It was really horrendous, believe you me. I really feel for them." Fortunately, the wind carried the flames away from Mr Coggins' house.
Tall Pines was formerly a Church of England free school built by Marshall's Charity in 1874, and was known as the Mission School. It closed in 1927.
Below, a few days later.
| Related pages on this website |
| Suspension Bridge history & bridges |
| Mission School |
| Related External websites |