The little fire-cart that saved the day
During the last war remote Pennine villages in Cumbria were given fire appliances in case stray bombs were dropped from Luftwaffe Junkers and Dorniers jettisoning their loads. Sometimes this resulted in direct hits to remote farms, killing on one occasion 11 occupants in a farm at Selside near Kendal in 1941.
"The fire-carts," says John Rudd, 75, of Dufton who lives in the picturesque village of Dufton nestling in the Eden Valley three miles from Appleby and beneath High Cup Nick, "were remarkably successful: two cart wheels carried hoses wrapped round spools that could be trundled to the nearest fire hydrant by horse- or man-power." Local crews succeeded in quenching random blazes and also cooling buildings which were burning too fiercely to be extinguished, thus containing the conflagration as bleating sheep and squealing pigs escaped.
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