BIG FIRE IN FOXTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10649, 4 June 1912, Page 6

BIG FIRE IN FOXTON.

FIFTEN PREMISES DESTROYED. \ THE WHOLE TOP'S NARROW I ESCAPE. NO WATER, NO BRIGADE. A disastrous fire occurred in the borough of Fox ton on Sunday morning. The damage is estimated to total £BOOO. There was no brigade and no water supply. The fire raged for three hours, and the rest of the business portion of the town was only saved by an extraordinary heavy downpour ov rain. The folloivivg is a list of the persons whose premise? wero destroyed : Mrs Agnes Maria Nye, stationer. Mi 1 Doyes, dentist. Mr George T. Woodroffe, butcher. Mr William E. Bullard, saddler. ' Mr Arthur William Bradley, tailor. Mr Richard Thomas Betty, boot depot. Mcsdames Henderson and Cunningham, supper room. Mr Archibald Reginald Osborne, tailor. Mr Ncwth, restaurant. Met hod ist> Church. Mr T. Breen, billiard saloon and dwelling. Mr Ernest Healey, chemist shop and dwelling. Mr Edwin Eustace Snow, bootshop. Boyle'.-, motor garage. The fire started at about 2 a.m. in a building in the Main Street, owned by Mr Eraser and occupied in. one part \by Mrs Nye, stationer, and in the other part 'by Mr Doyes, dentist. It is not known in which of the two shops the outbreak occurred., A good wind was blowing at t'he time, and the fire made.headway.rap. -idly.-; Shortly after tlie.'ci»nimence;^'iit. of 'the conflagrationthe wind changed a little, and blew from tho south. From Eraser's .building the fire spread to Mr G. T. Woodroffe's butchery on one side and the 'Methodist Church on tho other. Both these were soon ablaze, and the.chance of saving them was seen to lie very small indeed ; in fact, they wero considered as doomed. From Woodroffe's the fire ran on to ' the saddlery business of Mr W. E. Bullard. This shop was swept away, and the flames attacked Mesdames Henderson and Cunningham's confectionery shop, then Mr A. R. Osborne's tailoring premises, and then Nowth's restaurant. 1 At tho point the progress of the roaring flames was checked by a brick wall, twelve feet high, in the premises i of Mr Perreauth, baker. The wall stopped the fire travelling further j north along the street. All this time willing workers had been toiling strenuously, 'but their work had been • of little avail until the wall had been ■ reached. Going south from the Methodist ; Church t'he fire spread to an. old billiard saloon owned by Mr G. Breen. A house adjoining the billiard saloon also caught, 'and from there the flames travelled to a two storey building occupied by Mr E. Healey, the lower ' portion as ia chemist's shop, the upper as a dwelling. Here the fire burned : furiously, and it rapidly spread to the bootshop of Mr E. E. Snow, then to aiii unoccupied building owned by Mr Boyle .and recently used as a motor garage. At Boyle's' the fire ended. By this time it was after five o'clock.