Crowd watched music shop fire in the snow in Oxford

Pc Keith Jenkins on night patrol in the snow saw smoke billowing into the street and ran to the fire station to raise the alarm.

The fire crew was just turning out having been alerted by a nightwatchman looking after neighbouring premises.

The blaze at the shop in Magdalen Street was spotted at 10pm on January 2, 1962, but had started some hours before.

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The Oxford Mail reported: “Firemen wearing breathing apparatus fought their way up two flights of stairs through thick smoke to reach the blaze.

“Others entered the building through a window on the floor above the fire, using a 20ft long wheeled escape ladder to reach it.

“Packed snow had to be chipped from a water main in Magdalen Street before hoses could be connected.”

The fire, watched by a small crowd, including dancers from the New Theatre, badly damaged a radio and television repair room and caused smoke damage in other parts of the building. It was put out by two high-pressure hose reel jets.

We were reminded of the blaze while looking back on the career of Sidney Boulter, Oxford’s chief fire officer.

He took over from his predecessor, Victor Fenn, on New Year’s Day 1962 and never forgot his first hours in charge.

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As we recalled (Memory Lane, January 4), he had first to deal with the aftermath of a fire in Stratford Street, off Iffley Road, on New Year’s Eve when Bill Barrett and his wife Pauline escaped from their blazing house sliding down bed sheets tied together from their upstairs bedroom.

The Oxford Mail report of the Taphouses fire in January 1962

Then, keen to see his team of firefighters in action, he joined them on late night calls on both January 1 and 2.

The first was at the Pressed Steel works at Cowley and the second was at Taphouses.

No details of the Pressed Steel fire were recorded, but reports of the music shop blaze appeared in fire service bulletins as well as in the Oxford Mail.

Describing the Taphouses fire, Mr Boulter told the Mail: “The heat was terrific. The fire must have been burning for some hours before it was discovered.”

When he retired in 1974, that hectic start in charge of the brigade remained firmly in his memory. He said: “I shall never forget those first 24 hours.”

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Charles Taphouse opened his music shop in 1857 and it traded in the city for 127 years under four generations of the family.

It began in Broad Street, moved to St Giles, then settled in its permanent home in Magdalen Street until 1982 when Debenhams, whose store surrounded it, took over the premises.

It moved to the Westgate Centre, but closed two years later.