Can you help with this page? Do you have any information or photographs that you could share with us?
- relating to the Hickling Fire Service
- can you tell us whether the Hickling fire service only attended fires in Hickling or did they also attend fires in neighbouring villages?
- news articles or accounts of fires in Hickling and how they were dealt with
- early fire insurance documents (often kept with old house deeds)
- copper fire insurance shields that were displayed on the outside of insured houses
For ten years from 1947 to 1956 Hickling had its own fire service.
A short record of this can be found in ‘A Scrapbook of Hickling’ (pp 62-63) along with additional photographs from the Wadkin Archive:
Hickling Fire Service was formed around 1947 the headquarters at West Bridgford. The fire tender was kept at Whittaker’ s at Beech House then at Miss. Wakelin ‘s before a piece of ground was bought on Chapel Lane from Miss. Proudman, School House and a special building erected. Practices were held on Sunday mornings . Water had to be drawn from the brook or canal as there was no mains water. The service was disbanded and the tender taken away at the beginning of 1956 but the hose and other articles were not collected until 1973 when they had completely perished. The building then became the garage belonging to the School House owned by Mr. & Mrs. R. (Bob) Spencer (nee Miss. Proudman)
Photo 1 Left to right:- Harold Hartshorn, Wilf Parr, Jack Parkes, Fred Payne, Bill Murden, Bob Collishaw, Fred Wiles, Ted Faulks, R.W.Baker Ashworth, West Bridgeford Firemen
Photo 2 Firemen ‘in action’. Photograph taken on the Dalby Brook bridge on Clawson Lane. The road was widened and the corner taken off at the cemetery during 1966.
Colourised Image (Phil Bulmer 1/11/26)
We are very grateful to Phil Bulmer for colourising this photograph of the Hickling Fire Service crew; it gives a wonderful view of how the scene would have looked at the time that the photograph was taken. There is a similar engine at the Museum at Duxford and the colourisation is based on that one; however (for example), if it is a Pyrene the fittings are likely to have been brass.
