{"id":1189,"date":"2026-09-16T16:09:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T16:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2026-09-18T16:36:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T16:36:01","slug":"drinkstone-fire-september-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/uncategorized\/drinkstone-fire-september-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Drinkstone Fire, September 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Wild-Fire at Drinkstone Cross Street and associated paddocks<\/b><\/div>\n
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On Sunday 06 September sometime after 12 noon a fire broke out on farmland in Drinkstone and spread quickly to surrounding paddocks and fields. The fire extended to an area of over 16 hectares and nine fire crews attended from local stations and also from as far away as Sudbury, Bury and Stowmarket and Newmarket. At 6 pm three hectares remained alight.<\/div>\n
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The prompt action of the Fire Service together with local residents who rallied to help and a local farming contractor who dug out a fire break using a large disc harrow kit and tractor, restricted the damage to fields, paddocks, hedgerows and Julia’s Wood, a small wood at the bottom end of Cross Street. Very fortunately no one was injured, and the ponies which were at risk were led to safety by their owners. Fire crews remained on site for several hours to dampen down and watch for hotspots.<\/div>\n
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A serious flare up occurred on the following Monday resulting from a fire inside the tree trunk of a tree causing a large section to break off and crash to the ground leading necessitating further action by the Fire Service.\u00a0 Firemen assisted by local residents felled all the trees that had \u201cglowing embers\u201d in their upper branches to prevent further spread.<\/div>\n
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A further re-ignition occurred on Thursday 10th September; the internal fire had weakened a tree and a large branch fell off and destroyed about 20m of post and rail fencing. The undergrowth caught light and the flames quickly moved towards Stotts Cottages. The undergrowth fire was stopped by a chain-of-buckets organised by a local resident of Cross Steet. The fallen branch and the remaining tree were treated by the Fire Service who arrived within 10 minutes of being alerted.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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Local residents Duncan and Lyn Hannant whose cottage (and two ponies) were at severe risk but miraculously escaped the fire\u00a0 expressed their heart felt thanks to the Fire Service and the many local people who helped;\u00a0<\/div>\n
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“Apart from destroying many acres of paddock land, hedges and the footpath bridges it was a blessing that no residential property was harmed and that no animals or people were either. This was down to very efficient actions by the many firemen and contributions from so many people helping us through this terrible time. Lyn and I are particularly sad about the destruction of Julia\u2019s Wood in which we have invested decades of care and nurturing to form a unique wildlife conservation area. It will never recover fully and always be \u201cscarred\u201d.<\/em><\/em>“<\/em><\/div>\n
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“Thank you so much to all our friends and colleagues who have sent us cards, gifts, phone calls, emails and also called to see us. We are so appreciative of all the good wishes from people locally impacted by the fire event, friends in the parish and those from further afield”.\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n
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Photographs of the fire and resultant damage can be seen below<\/div>\n
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Wild-Fire at Drinkstone Cross Street and associated paddocks \u00a0 On Sunday 06 September sometime after 12 noon a fire broke out on farmland in Drinkstone and spread quickly to surrounding paddocks and fields. The fire extended to an area of over 16 hectares and nine fire crews attended from local stations and also from as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1217,"href":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drinkstonevillage.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}