This book ,which records the
attendance of all brigade members from 1913 right through to the end of
the Second World War, is in a very precarious state and unfortunately a
few pages from the year 1943 seem to be missing. The main reasons for
recording the content here is twofold: First to provide a list of
fireman's names so that anyone wishing to trace whether someone was a
member of the brigade can check that and also determine the period of
time the person was a member - Second, to indicate once again the
dedication the members of the brigade had to their locality,
particularly in World War Two, remembering that all were not full time
fireman but held down a full time job too! In the latter, of course,
there was the added pressure of working long hours anyway! The employers
too were showing considerable commitment to the war effort - it can be
seen by these records that in 1940 and into 1941 firemen were leaving
their place of work on several occasions per day to respond to air raid
warnings. Similarly, these firemen were committing at least every other
night on duty at the fire station!
As indicated above, although
the book covers World War II it only records those Members of the
brigade who were enrolled as National Fire Service (NFS) and does not
show any records of either the Male or Female Auxiliary Fire Service
(AFS). It will be seen from the photograph taken in 1948 [
Photo Gallery ] that there were quite a
number of women involved too! It can only be assumed that the AFS were
separately 'accounted' for and that these records were lost or are
somewhere unknown.
The book has been broken down
into three periods as set out below and these are in PDF Format which
can be downloaded. You should note that the entries were set out to span
across the whole book and the best way to read the pages would be to
print them out on hard copy so that the pages can be linked (paired)
and then read across - the pages have been number sequenced in each year
for this purpose.
