MORRIS Motors’ firemen were regular winners in competitions against other private brigades.

Friendships were forgotten as they battled for supremacy with other brigades from Oxford and elsewhere in drill contests.

Large crowds would turn out to see the rival brigades in action with their pumps and hoses and cheer them on to victory.

The photograph below was sent in by Mary Biggs, of Horspath, whose husband Tony was a Morris Motors fireman.

He is pictured with his fellow team members and their trophies after what was clearly a successful afternoon at one of the drill competitions.

As we recalled (Memory Lane, May 16), Oxford at one time had 18 private brigades with a total of 120 trained firemen protecting factories, hospitals and university buildings.

The firemen were mostly volunteers who had other jobs on the site and would down tools and rush to the scene of a fire or other emergency as soon as the alarm sounded.

Their quick intervention often saved lives and property in the crucial minutes before the city fire brigade arrived.

Mrs Biggs recalls how the firemen at Morris Motors were on call night and day. She writes: “The siren was sounded in Cowley when they were needed and the firemen had alarms fitted in their homes.

“When the factory experienced short-time working, they had to report to the fire station. They practised every week in preparation for the inter-factories’ competitions.

“When the competitions were held locally, it made a good family day-out.”

The private brigades were members of the Oxford Fire Brigades’ Association, which was formed in 1913 at a smoking concert at the Clarendon Press Institute in Walton Street.

It represented five brigades at that time – Oxford University Press, Oxford University Museum, Brasenose and Magdalen Colleges and Nuneham House.

Brigades were formed later at other places, including Morris Motors, Pressed Steel, Morris Radiators, Littlemore Hospital, New College, John Allen’s and MG Cars.

The private brigades were at their strongest at the start of the Second World War, with 18 recorded, but by the 1950s, many were beginning to disappear, mainly because of the difficulty of persuading workers to become firefighters.

Efforts were made to recruit women and older men to no avail, and by 1985, when the University Press brigade celebrated its centenary, it was one of only two private brigades left in the city – the other was British Leyland.