Woman dies after blaze takes hold at farm’s office building

The woman in her 50s was dragged from the burning building at Manor Farm in Little Coxwell at 6.39am.

She was taken to the Great Western Hospital in Swindon, where she later died from her injuries, police said.

Paper deliverer Steve Kershaw was on his morning round when he spotted the fire at the brick office building, next to a stone house on the farm.

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He said: “I went down to the farm to deliver the papers and I could smell burning.

“It’s a working farm so I didn’t think much of it.

“But when I came back up past the office building I could see smoke coming out of the roof timbers and window frames.”

Paper deliverer Steve Kershaw, who helped drag the woman out of the building.

Mr Kershaw, 53, knocked at the house next door, whose occupants called the fire brigade.

He said: “The man came out with me and we looked in.

“The smoke was so thick you couldn’t see anything.

“We opened the door and it just came billowing out like a big dark cloud.

“When we opened the door some flames started up.

“There were papers on the floor that were burning.”

The men crawled inside to discover a woman on the floor of the office.

Father-of-three Mr Kershaw, who is also a painter and decorator from Highworth, near Swindon, said: “We dragged her out together and put her on the pavement outside.

“She was already motionless at that point. There was no movement.

“There was this black stuff like tar coming out of her nose and mouth.

“She wasn’t burned, but she was not in a good state.”

The woman – named locally as a member of the Allsopp family – was taken to the Great Western Hospital by ambulance crews.

Ambulance spokeswoman Catherine Morrow said the two men were checked over at the scene but did not require hospital treatment.

Robin and Susan Erskine live opposite the farm.

Mrs Erskine said: “Something woke me at about 6.30am and there was sound of heavy vehicles outside.

“I wondered what was going on.

“I thought it would be a horse cart or something.

“But when we opened the curtains there were blue flashing lights.”

Mr Erskine, a member of the village’s parish council, added: “Four or five people work in that farm office.

“It’s where the estate managers work from.”

According to the parish council’s website, the council’s clerk Douglas Lines works in the fire-affected building.

A spokeswoman for Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service said that it was called out at 6.37am to a building fire in Little Coxwell.

Thames Valley Police said it was not treating the fire as suspicious.