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Mercury & Herald 1971
Joe Gobbey's reminiscenecs of the fire in 1905
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When the fire started on a weekday afternoon Mr. Gobbey was working at Castlethorpe Railway Station as a porter and he raced to the blaze while the signalman gave the alarm. “I was first on the scene,” said Mr. Gobbey.
Wolverton Fire Brigade hurried to the village and the railway sent a big tender by rail to Castlethorpe Railway Station. And there it stood in a siding helpless while the cottages were gutted but presumably capable of action if railway property became involved.
Mr.Gobbey told me how he and Jack Allen, a stonemason from Stoke Goldington, got a piano out of Teddy Powel’s house; Jack Allen was inside pushing, Mr. Gobbey was outside pulling and when the piano stuck in the doorway the two men climbed over the piano to exchange places so that Mr. Gobbey could do the pushing.
It was as well they did change places, because, as Mr. Gobbey, the younger man, pushed the piano clear, the blazing roof collapsed inside the cottage.
Other residents recalled by Mr. Gobbey were Harry Geary of Hanslope coming down from the roof of an old butcher’s shop with his shirt sleeves on fire, and of a barrel of beer being delivered at the height of the blaze. As it could not go in the house, it was rolled up the garden path and left.
A collection was started in the district to help the victims of the fire and Mr. Gobbey and another porter helped by taking collecting boxes along the trains which stopped at Castlethorpe Station.
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