Pymoor - Fen Fires

Finally the farmer may be called on to face what is surely the strangest of all farming hazards; his land itself may catch fire.  When the peat soil is dry - and peat fires are almost exclusively a summer hazard - it can easily be set on fire by burning grasses on a dried-up dyke side or by a bonfire of unwanted straw in the corner of a field.  And while such fires are comparatively easy to put out if tackled at once or even within an hour or two of their starting (although even then they may leave the soil badly pitted), neglected they are, in the words of one fireman, the very devil.  And the purer the peat the greater the risk of fire.  The majority of outbreaks in the Ely district, of which nearly forty in the dry summer of 1949 were serious enough to be attended by the Ely brigade, took place in such areas as Stretham, Prickwillow, Little Downham and Pymoor, where the peats still remain pure and deep.

These soil fires are very tenacious.  Once fire has taken hold it can spread through the peat for hundreds of feet and unless put out by man is halted only by such obstacles as a drain or watercourse.  Peat fires can burn downwards toothe bed of an extinct river near Burwell once came to light only because the peat which had formed in its buried channel burnt right out in a soil fire.

Such fires are also long-lived; even when tackled with all the resources of a modern fire service a peat fire can burn for days; unattended, or because isolated only partly attended, a fire could burn for years. In 1871 the peat in Conington Fen caught fire and burned for several weeks; at night the little hillocks of flame which burst from the surface of the burning soil gave a brilliant display which could be seen clearly by those travelling on the nearby main line of the Great Northern Railway.  In more recent years one peat fire near Barway burned for months, while another at the end of Mow Fen Drove, Littleport - an unmetalled drove-way - burned for nearly two years.  This fire had already spread for some distance before the firemen were called; after a time it extended to the dykes on either side of the drove and spread for hundreds of feet until it was stopped by a cross dyke at the drove end.  Finally the whole surface of the drove was reduced to a length of fine white ash.  This was admittedly a unique case; yet its record could be equalled by any peat fire which was not dealt with at once in a resolute and sustained attack.

Peat fires are not only tenacious; they are deceptive too.  They do not, in their early stages, betray their presence by flame or smoke; and thus at a time when they could most easily be dealt with are detected less by sight than by smell.  If in those early stages no one passes near enough to catch the peat reek a fire can easily burn throughout the rest of the day and the following night.  And when in the cold air of early morning clouds of smoke mixed with steam from the waterlogged lower peats show that the soil is burning, then it is too late for the farmer to put it out alone.  The fire brigade must be called.

[ Top of Page ]