The Great Fire of Great Horwood and Other Fires
Clare Martin

"Fire!  Fire!"  This was the shout that filled the villagers’ hearts with dread;  the shout that brought the whole community running to help.  Not a second could be lost as villagers worked together to tackle the fire with bucket chains and fire hooks to try to bring the blaze under control, each hoping that the fire could be stopped before it spread to their own property.  From the 18th century, Winslow and Buckingham had fire brigades that could also help.  Before the advent of brick and tile construction, most buildings in Great Horwood, as elsewhere, were timber-framed, thatched and built very close together.  With homes and trades relying on open fires for heat, there was always a high risk that a stray spark could cause a serious blaze.  Great Horwood suffered several fires and the most serious ones have shaped how the village looks today.

Earlier Fires
 
The first fires in Great Horwood for which records exist were in 1724 and 1725.  Yeoman George Williatt’s house was damaged by fire on 17th July 1724 and then burnt down along with his outbuildings, goods and grain in another fire on 11th June 1725.  Williatt’s losses were estimated at £280 1s 4d (£280.07).

The village suffered another fire on 3rd May 1771 as the Northampton Mercury reported:

A fire broke out at a malting at Great-Horwood … which in a short time burnt down the malting, with a barn, stable and two dwelling-houses;  but the wind being very still, and there being great help, and an engine from Winslow, it was kept from spreading any further, though all the buildings round about were thatch’d.  It was occasioned by a boy leaving the fire when attending, which is very often the case.  Near 100 Quarters of malt, and a great quantity of beans, were burnt or spoil’d.

​It is impossible to pin-point the location of the 1771 fire because the thatched buildings that escaped this blaze were probably obliterated ten years later by a huge conflagration that destroyed most of the village.

The Great Fire of Great Horwood 1781

A distinctive feature of present-day Great Horwood is the predominance of Georgian red-brick houses at its centre but the village of 27th May 1781 and before would have looked very different.  On Monday 28th May 1781 Great Horwood was suddenly and dramatically transformed when a great fire reduced most of the village to ashes in the space of just two hours.  The curate, Jonathan Brigges, made this entry in the parish register book:

'May 28th 1781 Greatest Part of the Town burnt down' The record of the 1781 fire in the Great Horwood Parish Register, 1740-1806, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, PR108/1/4. (By permission of the Reverend Andrew Lightbown.)

The ferocity of the fire and the rapidity of its spread were reported in newspapers around Britain.  Many, including the Derby Mercury, printed an anonymous Winslow resident’s description of the fire, which it said:

​spread with such astonishing rapidity, that in little more than half an hour sixty houses (amongst which number were about sixteen farmhouses and four malthouses) with all their barns, stables, wheat ricks, bean ricks, hay stacks, waggons, carts, ploughs, harrows, and most part of their household goods were all on fire together and entirely consumed in the space of about two hours;  several of the inhabitants saving no more than the clothes upon their backs.  Many neighbours, at the beginning of the fire, in a few minutes were prevented from giving assistance to others, by their own houses being on fire.

The ‘brief’, or letter of request sent out to other parishes to ask for aid for the people affected by the fire, is transcribed in John Harris’s 1907 writings about Great Horwood.  The brief also reports the destruction of ‘sixteen farm houses, four malthouses and forty cottages or tenements’ as well as almost all of the inhabitants’ possessions, their grain, pigs and the equipment they needed to earn their livings and farm their land.
 
The villagers had lost everything and in the space of only two hours.  The stillness of the wind, if true, makes the rapidity of the fire’s spread even more remarkable.  However, the summer of 1781 saw very little rain.  Indeed in Buckinghamshire it was ‘the most remarkably dry summer that was ever known’ until the first showers finally arrived in September.  As well as being timber-framed, thatched and built close together, most of the shops and dwellings in the centre of Great Horwood also had wooden outbuildings and pigsties.  There were barns, haystacks and wheat ricks in the yards of the farmhouses.  All of this was so dry due to the lack of rain that, with the initial spark, Great Horwood rapidly went up in flames.  The fire is believed to have started when two small children were sent to fetch some fire from a neighbour but, on their way home, accidentally dropped some embers from the fire shovel, setting fire to some dry straw in a farmyard.  The fire quickly spread to a malthouse and beyond.

Sadly, two men lost their lives in the Great Fire.  The letter in the Derby Mercury gives this gruesome description of their deaths:

​Amongst the lives that are lost was a poor man of a neighbouring village that had been drinking at one of the public-houses;  he went, as is supposed, into one of the barns to lie down to sleep, and was unfortunately burnt to death in a most shocking manner.  His legs and thighs were burnt quite off close to his body;  his arms burnt off, his head, when he was moved, separated from his body, quite burnt to a cinder.  Another poor old man was pulled out of a house that was all on fire by the leg, burnt in so terrible a manner that he died two days after.

This account indicates that there might have been more than two deaths but a search of the burial registers of neighbouring parishes has not revealed any further victims.  Jonathan Brigges recorded the burials of two male victims in the Great Horwood burial register so the man from a neighbouring village might have been buried here.

'George Emerton burnt to death by the fire which happened the 28th of May 1781 - buried May 30th Thomas Franklin burnt by the fire on the same day buried May 31st' The entry is signed 'Brigges Curate'. Great Horwood Parish Register, 1740-1806, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, PR108/1/4. (By permission of the Reverend Andrew Lightbown.)

The fire engines of Winslow and Buckingham were brought to fight the blaze and managed to prevent a house that had caught fire from being completely destroyed.  However, these primitive man-powered pump and hose contraptions were no match for a fire of such ferocity and by the time people had ridden to Winslow and Buckingham to raise the alarm and the machines had been loaded on to wagons and taken to Great Horwood, much of the village must have already been ablaze.  The two engines from Winslow were badly damaged by their use in fighting this fire, with one of them being beyond repair and all the leather buckets ‘torn to pieces’.  

Diagram of an 18th-century fire engine

​Luckily, temporary accommodation and emergency aid were quickly procured for the victims of the fire.  This enabled the curate, churchwardens and overseer to issue a caution to the public just one week after the fire, urging them not to be deceived by anyone going door-to-door trying to elicit aid by claiming to have lost their property in the Great Horwood fire.  The long-term future of the villagers was more difficult to provide for.  Although a few people had fire insurance, most did not.  According to the note of thanks printed in the Oxford Journal and other newspapers in January 1782, the villagers’ losses totalled £7,444 (equivalent to about £1.1 million today), all insurances deducted, and they received £2,054 (about £310,000) as a result of the plea for aid.
 
Although the collection and distribution of aid for those affected by the fire was authorised and organised at Quarter Sessions in Aylesbury, the only reference to the 1781 fire in the Quarter Sessions minute book itself is to the case of Joseph Jones of Great Horwood.  He appealed to the Michaelmas 1781 Quarter Sessions because he had paid or promised to pay £42 duty to the excise collectors on 80 quarters of malt which had then been destroyed by the fire and he wished for a certificate from the court excusing him from this duty.  Fortunately, after examining the matter and hearing the oaths of credible witnesses, the court did order ‘that a drawback or an allowance of £42 be made to the said Joseph Jones’. 
 
We can only guess at how the poorest villagers were affected by the loss of their homes and possessions.  The aid collected from other parishes was not distributed until six or seven months after the blaze so the parish overseers were responsible for providing food and shelter for everyone who could not afford to do so themselves.  Presumably the fire left many people in this situation because, until the aid from outside the parish was distributed, they were unable to replace tools and other things necessary to earn a living. 
 
By contrast, some of the wealthier inhabitants of Great Horwood, who had probably taken out fire insurance, did quite well out of the fire.  They were able to replace their lost buildings with bigger and better ones.  Although they held their property by copyhold tenancy of the manor, they could use these new buildings as collateral to raise substantial sums of money through conditional surrender in order to advance their business interests.  For example, the Great Horwood manor court book records that, at the General Court Baron and Leet of 21st April 1785 Richard Knibb the younger, a grocer, made a conditional surrender of ‘all that new-erected messuage [dwelling house and plot] (whereon one messuage stood which was burnt down at the late dreadful fire) with a curtilage [plot or yard] and orchard’.  This was probably 10 High Street.  Joseph Whitby, a lace dealer, certainly saw the fire as a business opportunity.  The manor court rolls include several references to him buying and selling property in the fire-affected areas of the village during the following years.

10 High Street

Unfortunately, there are no accurate pre-1781 maps to show the arrangement of buildings in Great Horwood before the Great Fire.  This has made it difficult to determine the precise area of the village that was damaged or destroyed in the blaze.  Nonetheless, through the kindness of the present inhabitants of a number of houses in the centre of Great Horwood in allowing me to examine their homes, combined with a study of surviving 18th-century documents, it has been possible to identify the extent of the 1781 fire with a reasonable degree of certainty.  There is no record of exactly where the fire started but the map shows the large area of Great Horwood that was damaged or destroyed by the Great Fire, a fire that burnt with such ferocity that it crossed the road in several places. ​

​Because so much of Great Horwood was destroyed in the 1781 fire the villagers needed to rebuild as quickly and, in many cases, as cheaply as possible.  Some of the houses destroyed had been at least partly built of stone.  Where these stone ruins were sound, to save time and money, they were built upon instead of being demolished first.  This gives some of the houses in Great Horwood an unusual stone and brick construction which identifies them as rebuilds of property destroyed in the Great Fire.  One such building is Church Hill in what is now School End.  This house was rebuilt after the fire.  The date ‘1782’ is built into its south gable brickwork and its north wall includes stone remains from the earlier building.

The date 1782 is built into the brickwork of the south gable wall of Church Hill, School End.

Side view of Church Hill, School End. Note the stone in the gable wall.

School End Farm

School End Farm is very similar in design to Church Hill. Restoration work in recent years revealed the date '1782' in this building too.  There were buildings all along the west side of School End before the 1781 fire and the blaze probably destroyed them all.  Some were never rebuilt.  The rectory at the time, now The Old Rectory, and neighbouring Tudor Cottage are both timber-framed buildings which pre-date the fire.  Evidently, the Great Fire did not reach the north-east part of School End.

Every building lining the south side of today’s High Street is red-brick because this area was obliterated by the Great Fire.  8 High Street is the most visible example of rebuilding upon 1781 fire ruins.  This house is mostly red-brick but the lower portion of the north and west walls are the stone remains of the pre-fire building.  The 1858 deeds to the house show that, before the fire, this building had adjoined a farmhouse that was burnt down.  8 High Street was originally timber-framed but, in a pre-1781 extension, stone walls were erected around it.  These walls protected some of the timber frame so that part of it survived the fire that severely damaged the building and destroyed the rest of the street. 

Side view of 8 High Street. The black colouring on the west (right) wall stone is paint, not soot from the fire.

There are references in the manor court records to other buildings destroyed in this area.  For example, the 1792 records refer to a ‘small triangular piece of ground (whereon a messuage formerly stood but which has been since burnt down)’.  This is where 5 and 6 High Street now stand.  3 High Street is another house built after the Great Fire but there are several lightly-scorched timbers of various ages in the roof space.  The pattern of scorching indicates that it probably happened in situ.  This shows that a mixture of salvaged and newer timbers were used in the rebuild and that there was probably another minor fire, perhaps a chimney fire, in this house at some point after the rebuild.

​The fire area extended to the east end of the High Street, where the date on the west gable end of 12 High Street shows that it was rebuilt in the 1780s.  Though much extended later, this is the ‘small bay window house on the south side of the Green’ built by John Cox after the fire.  Cox owned the Bull alehouse but it is unclear whether it had stood on this site or whether this was another of Cox’s properties.  The fire area also extended to the west end of the High Street and around the corner to include the plot where the Swan Inn now stands, but no further.  In 1795, Joseph Whitby surrendered to Thomas Viccars, a victualler [publican] ‘one newly erected cottage upon the site of a cottage sometime since burnt down’.  The copyhold number identifies this cottage as the building that is now The Swan.  However, it was not an inn at the time of the fire.  The original Swan alehouse was actually slightly south of its current position, about where Old Swan House now stands.  A reference to the Swan alehouse in the 1782 manor court records indicates that it escaped the blaze.  Evidently the business was moved to the new building next door and the original alehouse was later demolished. 

Early 20th-century view of the East side of Winslow Road, showing The Swan and Old Swan House (called West View at that time)

​Confusingly, early 20th-century photographs show a now demolished thatched cottage on the corner of the High Street and Winslow Road.  Although it appears to be an old building that miraculously escaped the fire that raged around it, this was almost certainly a barn that Joseph Whitby built and sold in 1782, ‘upon a certain piece or parcel of ground whereon a cottage (lately burnt down) heretofore stood and wherein William Hobbs did then dwell’.   While the post-fire houses were built of brick with tile or slate roofs, a barn hurriedly built to sell on for a quick profit was probably built using cheap materials and methods.  This is why, once converted into a dwelling, it appeared to be much older than its neighbours.

West End of the High Street before the Village Hall was built, showing the now-demolished thatched cottage.

Surprisingly, most buildings on the south of The Green escaped the blaze.  Although there is a very narrow red-brick extension to the west wall of The Old Post House, hidden by false timber framing, the rest of this house is genuine timber frame, pre-dating the Great Fire.  So too were the cottages that once adjoined its east wall and the west end of Ivy Farm. 

The Old Post House (left), which escaped the 1781 fire and its neighbour, 12 High Street, which is built on the site of a building destroyed by the fire.

The centre of The Green before 1781 was an open space, as it is now.  All of the buildings on the north and west of The Green were burnt down in the Great Fire and all were rebuilt soon afterwards, apart from number 13, which was built in the 1840s or 1850s.  There are references to some of these post-fire rebuilds in the manor court records.  In 1784, John Harris senior made a conditional surrender of:

​that newly erected messuage, cottage or tenement … with the pightle [small enclosure] thereunto belonging adjoining the churchyard of Great Horwood … in the tenure or occupation of Mary Keen widow.

John Harris rebuilt the Crown Inn on The Green following its destruction by the fire but this surrender relates to another rebuilt property, probably Yew Tree Cottage.

​In 1786, baker Thomas Edwin conditionally surrendered ‘his new erected brick messuage or tenement…now in the occupation of the said Thomas Edwin abutting upon a certain pond called the Green Pond’.  Pre-1874 maps of Great Horwood show that the pond on The Green was in front of 11 The Green and part of The Long House, so Thomas Edwin owned one of these.  Both were built in 1781.  The Long House has several bricks dated 1781 and initialled by the builders, and Daphne Hanson remembered that 11 The Green’s door-knocker had the date 1781 scratched on it. 

The Long House, The Green. (The photograph was taken before the garden wall was repaired and before the sundial celebrating the millennium was relocated from The Green to Great Horwood School.)

Two of several bricks dated 1781 on the front wall of The Long House. One (above) reads 'T.E. 1781' and the other, 'M.R. 1781'.

Some of the post-fire rebuilds on The Green are built on the ruins of the pre-1781 buildings.  A full-height stone wall from the original building on the site of Yew Tree Cottage survived the fire.  The eastern wall of 13 The Green is another example.  After the fire, a brick wall was built upon the ruins to provide a taller boundary between number 11 and Bugle House.  This brick wall was later extended upwards to form the east wall of number 13.

The rear (west) wall of Yew Tree Cottage.

The lower part of the east wall of 13 The Green.

7 The Green is also built upon stone ruins but these form part of an internal wall, as the front of the post-fire house extended further forward than its predecessor.  This house shows how materials salvaged from the ruined buildings were used in the construction of the new.  The banister is made of wood which had obviously been part of something different in the past and the same is true of a wooden post in the back room.

7 The Green

There is also a badly charred beam above the doorway leading from the hallway to the back room of 7 The Green.  However, this charring actually occurred during another fire in the building.  Early on 21st February 1893 Henry Stevens, the butcher who lived and worked in this house, came downstairs to find:

the place full of smoke, and on opening the front room door the fire burst out, driving him away.  He, however, got in through the pantry, where he was soon overpowered by the smoke and was dragged out at great risk by his daughter [16-year-old Elizabeth or 14-year-old Amy], who singed her eyebrows and hair in so doing.  An alarm was given and the fire was got under, but not before it had burned one room and the passage.

It is unclear whether any of what is now Bugle House survived the fire because its external walls were pebble-dashed in the mid-20th century.  However, old photographs of its front show that it is an 18th-century brick building, built in the same style as others erected immediately after the fire, including having the bricked-up window space common to many of them because they were built at a time when Window Tax was applied to all houses with seven or more windows.  Number 13, built around the time that Window Tax was abolished, actually had a central window that was later bricked up. 

The north-east corner of The Green, c.1910.

Most of the buildings on Church Lane were also burnt down.  Some of these were the Rector’s barns and other farm buildings.  The Reverend Edward Whitmore was unaware of their destruction because he was an absentee incumbent.  At the time of the fire he was thought to be abroad, so it was the curate, Jonathan Brigges, who supported his parishioners in the aftermath of the fire.  1 and 3 Church Lane and the Glebe House outbuildings visible from the Church Lane burial ground are all clearly built upon stone ruins.  Surprisingly, the fire did not reach timber-framed 2 Church Lane.

Side view of 1 Church Lane and also the former entrance to St James churchyard, blocked up c.1874.

Rear view of 3 Church Lane, showing stone ruins of the pre-1781 building.

Rear view of Glebe House outbuildings, showing stone ruins of the pre-1781 Rector’s farm buildings.

The Great Fire also destroyed buildings in Nash Road.  Photographs show the ruins of one of the burnt properties at the base of the 18th-century house adjoining the former Post Office, both of which were demolished when Nash Road was widened in the mid-20th century. 

Nash Road in the early 20th century, showing the building adjoining the post office.

However, the fire did not spread to 5-7 Nash Road, which is a substantial timber-framed building from the 16th or 17th century but with a 19th-century red-brick front.  It was a barn, which was converted into three cottages during the 19th century.  The brickwork of 9 Nash Road shows that it also predates the Great Fire.  Interestingly, both 5-7 and 9 Nash Road are built upon even older stone ruins.

The 19th-century red-brick front of 5-7 Nash Road

Rear view of part of 5-7 Nash Road, showing the 16th or 17th-century timber frame and the stone remains of an earlier structure.

Rear view of 9 Nash Road, showing a small area of stone from an earlier structure. (The brickwork on the gable end shows that the roof of this property was raised a storey at some point probably in the 19th century.)

The Manor Court records refer to two of the buildings burnt down in Nash Road, which was known as Woodend at the time of the fire.  On 3rd April 1782 John Jorden, a yeoman of Little Horwood, made an absolute surrender to John Carter of Whaddon of ‘all that his one curtilage, toft or piece of ground on which a cottage called Williams lately stood (now burn[t] down) lying in Woodend’.  In 1787, Carter surrendered this plot and its newly-built cottage to his son Thomas, along with another piece of ground in Woodend on which a cottage named Barkers had burned down.  At that time Woodend included the east side of The Green, for Barkers stood where Taylored Kitchens now stands.  A little cottage, similar in size to its neighbour, 21 The Green, was erected on the Barkers site after the fire but replaced in the late 19th century with the present building.  The fire must have crossed the road near where Bugle House and 17 The Green now stand and the area of 18th and 19th-century building, from the Congregational chapel in Nash Road up to 3 Little Horwood Road, shows the probable eastern extent of the Great Fire.  

Red-brick buildings erected on Nash Road and The Green following the fire of 1781.

The fire might even have spread across Little Horwood Road.  There is no documentary evidence to determine whether it did or not.  However, the oldest part of what is now Five Penny Farm is largely brick but it also has a substantial stone plinth, a stone rear wall and, inside, part of a timber frame.  This indicates that the north side of the building might have been damaged by the fire.  The east part of Ivy Farm is also a mix of stone and 18th-century brick.  The fire may have reached this building too but, equally, it might have been a stone outbuilding that was converted into dwellings, perhaps even before the Great Fire.

The brick front and gable end wall of Five Penny Farm, Little Horwood Road.

Part of the rear of Five Penny Farm, showing the join of the brick gable end wall with the older, stone, rear wall.

The north east corner of Ivy Farm, showing brick construction on earlier stone.

Part of the rear of Ivy Farm also showing brick construction on the earlier stone.

Another Fire

Much of Great Horwood was rebuilt quickly following the Great Fire but the process of reconstruction was still underway when disaster struck again.  On 6th July 1791 Great Horwood suffered its third serious fire in as many decades.  The Oxford Journal reported:

Wednesday last at three in the afternoon, a fire broke out at Great Horwood … which consumed eight dwelling houses, one large malthouse, three cottages with the out buildings, as also a large quantity of malt, farming stock, household goods, and wearing apparel:  in short some of the inhabitants had a narrow escape with their lives, The flames were rapid but by the timely assistance of the engines from Winslow and Buckingham, the fire was got under.

The manor court records for 1792 refer to ‘a pightle of land whereon a cottage lately stood and now burnt down lying and being in the east part of the village’.  The copyhold number indicates that it was on the site where 21-23 Little Horwood Road now stands. 

21-23 Little Horwood Road

The east end of Little Horwood Road must have been more built-up than it is now and most of the buildings destroyed were not rebuilt.  One of the people whose home was burnt down was Richard Knibb, probably the same Richard Knibb who had lost his home and business in the 1781 fire.  He had sold his High Street property in 1789 but disaster pursued him to his new home.  The plot on which Knibb’s house had stood and the adjoining orchard were sold at auction three weeks after the fire, as well as about ten lots of bricks, burnt timber and other remains of the fire. 
 
This time the village did not need to seek relief from neighbouring parishes.  All the affected paupers were given as much money as the committee responsible for distributing relief considered prudent.  This money was donated by the gentlemen on the committee, gentlemen with property in the village and others who knew the inhabitants, as well as £45 14s (£45.70) from the committee for a recent fire in Olney.  However, this did not stop a conman from travelling around the county, with a letter purported to be signed by Jonathan Brigges and others, attempting to elicit relief for losses of £200 in the Great Horwood fire.  Brigges published a letter in the Northampton Mercury explaining that he had not signed this letter and that none of the three people who really had lost £200 or more in the fire had attempted to solicit any such charity. 
 
Most of the people who lost their homes in the 1791 fire were indigent poor.  Instead of rebuilding the paupers’ dwellings, the parish overseers purchased the copyholds to some existing properties, including 6 Spring Lane.  William Viccars took advantage of the failure to rebuild the burnt cottages.  The manor court of 1795 judged that he or his son and workman, Thomas, had made an unlawful encroachment because they had:

Inclosed and hedged in a spot of ground part of the waste and the site of houses lately [burnt] and at the time of the fire the property of the parish who took them by copy, and occupied by paupers put therein by the parish officers.

Fortunately, the 1791 fire was the last fire to cause extensive devastation in Great Horwood but some other notable blazes in Great Horwood and Singleborough are described in Crimes and Calamities.

---

Sources:

Buckinghamshire Quarter Sessions Minute Book, MS, Michaelmas 1781, 4th October.

Case, with opinion of George Harris, MS, 3rd August 1781, New College Oxford Archives [NCA], 3418.

A. J. Clear, ‘A History of Great Horwood’, in Bucks Herald, 5th August 1916.

Robert Gibbs, Buckinghamshire, a Record of Local Occurrences and General events Chronologically arranged, Vol II 1700-1800, Aylesbury, 1879, pp 196-197.

Great Horwood Manor Court Book, 1776-1826, MS, NCA, 3951.

Great Horwood Parish Register 1740 to 1806, MS, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies [CBS], PR 108/1/4.

John Harris, Great Horwood, Bucks, MS, Arapahoe (Nebraska, USA), 1907

William le Hardy (ed.), County of Buckingham Calendar to the Sessions Records Vol VII 1724-1730, Aylesbury, 1980.

Derby Mercury, 1st June 1781.

Northampton Mercury, 13th May 1771, 19th July 1788, 18th April 1789, 23rd July and 12th November 1791, 24th February 1893.

Oxford Journal, 12th January 1782, 9th July 1791.

© Clare Martin, 2012.