大象传媒

Until after the war, most parish records of births, deaths and marriages were kept in churches, as they had been for centuries.
With the records of many parishes having been destroyed by German bombing of towns, it was decided to move the records of the parish of Stelling and upper Hards out of the village itself and onto one of the surrounding farms , where it was felt that they would be less likely to be a target for enemy bombs.

Some time in 1944, with the renewed threat of the German V-weapons causing grave concern to communities, it was decided again to move the parish records to the farms. Thus it was that the records (as I understand it) were stored for safekeeping in my grandfather's barn.

My Grandfather had been burning some rubbish one day some distance from the barn and the fire had left a patch of burnt grass and ashes, although it had also been thoroughly doused with water to put it out. This dousing was compounded by a couple of days of heavy rain, ensuring that the fire was no more than a soggy memory.
Some days later, when the weather was quite hot again, to the consternation of my grandparents, the barn caught fire and burnt down, taking the records, (or whatever portion of them were housed there at any rate) with it. Afterwards, as my grandparents surveyed the scene with dismay, my uncles, aged four and two at the time, concernd themselves with dragging bits and pieces of wood away from the gutted barn and depositing them at varying distances away. My uncle cannot remember why they did this. He merely remembers doing it.

A few days later the county fire inspectors visited the farm to assess the damage and determine the reason for the barn's having burnt down. With no knowledge of the rubbish fire the previous week, they decided, probably correctly, that the fire must have been started by combustion caused by composting action in the wet hay which had been exposed to and thus heated by the bright sunlight of the previous few days (this is the same effect which causes compost heaps to spontaniously burst into flames). The inspectors visit would have been a brief one, as the wider events of the time must have given them very busy shedules, and had they known about the rubbish fire they might well have decided to save time on their investigation of the remains and simply decide that the fire had been caused by sparks from the rubbish fire (despite it having been several days earlier and followed by heavy rain). They did not know about this fire however as my grandfather sensibly judged that it would not be a good idea to mention it and as they had seen nothing to suggest a previous fire they checked the ruined barn properly and came up witth what was probably the correct cause of the fire. What of the burnt grass and ashes though? Just by chance, my uncle Charles had pulled a partially burnt section of planked (or possibly wattled) walling over to the site of the rubbish fire and had covered it, probably completely unintentionally.
Thus the probably unintentional act of a two year old who was simply doing something for fun may have saved my grandparents from getting into some serious bother with the authorities, the loss of the barn having been bad enough already.

Paul Geddes

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