Fire at Hunts House
Western Gazette, 29 August 1947
Fire at Seavington ~ Neighbours and Soldiers help to fight blaze.
Villagers and soldiers from a passing convoy helped at a fire at an old thatched house
at Seavington near Ilminster on Monday, belonging to and occupied by Mr Frederick
Hutchings, an iron and steel merchant.
The cottage stands in the centre of the village on the main Yeovil - Taunton road.
About 4 o’clock in the afternoon ‘Mr Hutchings left the house to feed the fowls’.
When he finished he turned round and saw flames coming from the right-hand
bedroom window on to the thatch.
His wife was asleep inside and he dashed back to see if she had got out safely.
Luckily she had been woken by the crackling of the fire in the bedroom where the fire began.
Neighbours helped when they saw the fire and formed a chain of buckets. Soldiers
from a RASC convoy of Lorries which was passing helped to get furniture out of the
top rooms.
Three-quarters of the roof was destroyed and some furniture was burnt. Fire pumps
from Ilminster and Martock managed to keep the fire away from the ground floor but
were on the job for three hours playing water onto the burning thatch.
The NFS were in charge of Column Officer C.O. Mitchell from Yeovil. But for a pond a few yards from the house, they could have run into water shortage difficulties.
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