The Great Fire at Kings Sutton......1785
This entry is the work of Sir Paul Hayter
Published in the
Banbury Historical Society’s Cake and Cockhorse Vol. 15, No. 6, 2002, p195.
It is reproduced by kind permission of Sir Paul and the Banbury Historical Society
In this document the 1785 finances are stated in £ s d, Pounds Shillings and Pence. Using the RPI to inflate the 1785 numbers to 2007 values, £1 in 1785 equates to approximately £100 in 2007. See www.measuringworth.com
Whereas the full document can be viewed by clicking here the following is a short extract of the details provided.
‘On Wednesday last a fire broke out at Kings Sutton which, owing to the dryness of the weather, spread so rapidly that it is said the greatest part of the Town is burnt down.’
Fire engines were called in from Banbury, Adderbury and Aynho, but to no effect. The fire spread fast and in about three hours 40 houses were burnt down. This was not ‘the whole town’ but, since the total number of houses in Kings Sutton may have been in the region of 150 (in those days it was quite separate from Astrop), it was a disastrously large part. Two days after the fire a public vestry or parish meeting was held to decide what to do. At the vestry the churchwardens, Thomas Tibbetts and Thomas Bricknell, and the Overseers of the Poor, John Wyatt and Robert Grimbly, and thirteen ‘principal sufferers’ by the fire appointed John Freke Willes, who lived at Astrop House and was the Lord of one of Kings Sutton’s two manors, and the Vicar of Kings Sutton, the Revd. John Deacle,
‘to act on our behalf & do request them to solicit such further Aid & Assistance from the neighbouring Gentlemen as they shall think expedient and proper’.
From the efficiency and drive of what followed, it is very likely that Mr Willes and the Vicar were the moving spirits behind the vestry meeting, rather than the victims of the fire who must still have been in a deep state of shock. They were able to draw on experience in tackling the disaster. There may have been nothing comparable in Kings Sutton but, as the Gentlemen’s Magazine implies, major fires were commonplace in 18th century England, just as they had been in previous centuries. Closely packed thatched houses were very vulnerable.
Only three days later, on July 18, a meeting of local gentlemen took place and 25 of them were appointed as a Committee. Virtually all came from outside Kings Sutton. The Committee’s first act was to nominate John Bloxham and Richard Charles to survey and estimate the loss of the Sufferers, as the victims of the fire were known. Their second act was to launch a public appeal for money to relieve the sufferers. This was done by advertisements in the Northampton Mercury and Jackson’s Oxford Journal, as follows..........
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The Great fire at Kings Sutton
