HISTORIC CUTS!

Clekenwell Fire Station A-27

 

London Fire Brigade is considering the closure of the Clerkenwell station - the brigade's oldest - and 16 others historic firehouses to save money, the BBC reports.
 
Job cuts and/or early retirement are also on the table.

A union official calls the plan the biggest threat to the brigade since World War II.

That's not an exaggeration in Clerkenwell's case.

German bombs narrowly missed the 19th Century-era fire station during the blitz.

On Aug. 17, the BBC released the following "leaked" list of  stations:

• Acton
• Belsize
• Bow
• Clapham
• Clerkenwell
• Downham
• Islington
• Kensington
• Kingsland
• Knightsbridge
• New Cross
• Peckham
• Silvertown
• Southwark
• Westminster
• Whitechapel
• Woolwich

The argument for closing the stations seems to be that the "antiquated" structures are too costly to maintain.

They properties would probably fetch considerable sums if put up for sale.

The Evening Standard said some engines would be re-assigned to Chiswick, East Greenwich, Euston, Hendon, Orpington, Purley, Southgate, Stanmore and Twickenham.

The bottom line: Fewer fire engines and fewer firefighters on London's streets.

BAYSWATER - 1869

On Oct. 1, 1869, an explosion killed seven people in a house in Bayswater. The owner of the house, at 69, Moscow Road - a Mr. Titheradge - was a confectioner who also sold fireworks, according to the 1870 edition of the Annual Register, published by Longmans.

The book said:

``At five minutes to three o'clock in the morning the constable who took this road as part of a very long beat happened to be passing near the house, when he heard a noise resembling fireworks, and was startled immediately afterwards by an explosion which blew the front of the shop out, shutters and all. He at once sprang his rattle, and used his best exertions to rouse the people in the place.

``But egress by the front was impossible almost immediately, as the house must have been in flames instantaneously in the front, and the explosion, to all appearances, went through the two windows over the shop. Of course all who slept in that apartment must have been killed at once. A second policeman came at the alarm of the rattle, and he ran for the engine, which came in fifteen minutes after the alarm.''