Yeovil's Virtual Museum

minor theme - disasters

Accidents, fires, etc in Yeovil

 

• The Riot of 1349
  Unrest over market taxes imposed by the Church

• Great Fire of Yeovil, 1450
  117 houses in Yeovil destroyed by fire

• Great Fire of Yeovil, 1640
  The "Protection" of King Charles i by Letters Patent

• Great Fire of Yeovil, 1802
  Tenements in Tabernacle lane and South Street destroyed

• The Yeovil Reform Riots of 1831
  Hundreds take to the streets, attacking property

• Collapse of the Circus
  The circus comes to town in 1887.... and promptly collapses

• A Series of Railway Accidents
  Just when you thought it was safe to let the 'train take the strain'

• The Kings Arms Fire of 1906
  Destruction of two cottages caused by a candle in 1906

• The Great Storm of 1906
  Destruction throughout the SouthWest

• The Bradford & Sons' Fire at Hendford Hill
  The fire in January 1908 that destroyed grinding mills and saw mills

• The Chapman & Co Fire at Mill Lane
  The fire that destroyed the old Frogg Mill buildings in 1909

• The Aplin & Barrett Fire
  The fire of 1912 that caused £1.5 to £2 million of damage

• Westland 'Walrus' crashes at Newton Surmaville
  The pilot had an extraordinary escape and crawled from the wreckage in 1921.

• The Medical Hall Bombed
  German bomb destroys Borough landmark on Good Friday 11 April 1941

• Timothy White's Gutted by Fire
  Forty firemen fight for hours in this fire of 1947

• Fire at the Electricity Board's stores
  The devastating fire of August 1949

• Secret Jet 'Plane Crashes on Houses
  Three killed in this disaster of October 1949

• The Bus Crash
  Ooops! a bus ends up in Dodham Brook in 1953

• Explosion in the Banana Factory
  The mid-1950s explosion in the banana ripening plant in Earle Street

• Tiger Moth Crashes at Yeovil
  Nearly missing houses, written off in a hedgerow

• The Larkhill Rubber Co Fire
  Larkhill soling factory destroyed by fire in 1971

• The Coopers Mill Fire
  Fire sweeps through Coopers Mill in 2001

• The Bell Inn Fire
  The Bell burns to the ground in 2013

 

From my collection. This colourised photograph features in my book "Lost Yeovil"

Photographed by William Ross and produced as a postcard, it is dated 23 February 1906 - the date the building that had housed the King's Arms was completely destroyed by fire although it hadn't of course, been a beerhouse for several decades.

 

Further disasters will be added in due course.