The Bridge Street fire

Roger Guttridge has personal memories of the fire which destroyed Harding’s newsagent’s shop at Sturminster Newton in 1956

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of the day that Harding’s newsagent’s shop at Sturminster Newton went up in smoke and flames.

The year was 1956 and I was a six-year-old pupil at Sturminster County Primary School (now the William Barnes School) in Bridge Street. Harding’s was a little further up Bridge Street, where Retsel House is now, so my mother and I had to walk right past the shop on our way to the school. I remember picking my way through the mounds of charred beams, thatch and other debris – and the fire brigade hoses strung out across the road.

The combined stench of fire, smoke and water damage stayed with me into adulthood, and those memories flooded back whenever I attended a fire as a reporter for the Western Gazette or the Bournemouth Evening Echo. I also remember learning how Roy Harding heroically carried his sons Christopher, a fellow pupil at my school, and his younger brother Richard, to safety at the height of the fire. Sadly, Chris and Richard are no longer with us. The picturesque thatched building was replaced by the grey and rather utilitarian Retsel House, which houses businesses to this day, including a pet shop and a barber’s shop.

In my later childhood there was a barber’s on the first floor. While waiting for a haircut, I would advance my education by exploring the revelations of an early girlie magazine called Parade. I don’t think it did me any harm, but others may potentially disagree.

The Hardings were rather unlucky with fires. The family’s previous business, the Bristol Bazaar, was in another thatched building at the corner of Ricketts Lane at the top of Bridge Street and was burned down in 1926, along with the adjoining shop occupied by Mr Pope the shoemaker. Historically, Sturminster has had several major fires – a notable one 340 years ago in in 1681 and another less than 50 years later in 1729 which destroyed 67 houses, ten barns and the Market House. One of the replacement buildings after 1729 became Barnett’s hardware shop at Market Cross, but this too was completely destroyed in a blaze complicated by exploding paint cans, paraffin and gas cylinders.