Blaze at Coate destroys former Swindon agricultural museum

Firefighters were called at 7.15am (Saturday 31 December) to battle a blaze at the former Coate Agricultural Museum at Coate Water just behind the Sun Inn.

The museum, which still had all the museum exhibits in place despite being closed for 30 years, was still smouldering this morning as Swindon fire crews dampened down the smouldering wreckage.

And Swindon Heritage has now vowed to rescue as many of the exhibits as possible and move them to the nearby Richard Jefferies Museum.

Crews from Swindon, Stratton and the water carrier from Royal Wootton Bassett were called just after 7.15am to Coate Water Park Lane where they found the 30mx15m barn well alright.

Firefighters used three main jets, two light portable pumps and the aerial appliance to extinguish the fire with two crews still at the scene.

A fire investigation will now be carried out to work out the cause of the fire.

Swindon fire crew manager Dan Burton said: "We will be doing all we can to make sure there is no re-ignition. At the moment we are on standby as we wait for the electricity supply to be cut off as there are still live electrics in the building.

"As far as the exhibits are concerned that will be for others to decide. Our job is just to make it safe and with the weakened state of the roof we would not send anyone in to reclaim anything simply due to the risk of life."

According to Dr Mike Pringle, a director of Swindon Heritage, the museum contained priceless farming equipment dating back centuries including tractors, threshers, carts, old dairy machines, and even an old horse drawn fire engine.

He said: "My biggest fear now is that the council will take one look and decide that it would be more economical to get a JCB and pull down the whole lot destroying anything that could be salvaged.

"You've got to remember that the heritage of Swindon is not only railways as it was a farming town for a thousand years before that. Since I took over the Richard Jefferies Museum I have asked several times for these exhibits that were just sitting there doing nothing to be moved to the Richard Jefferies Museum but to no avail. They seemed to prefer it just sitting there in the dark for three decades.

"It's time that Swindon Council started taking Swindon's heritage seriously otherwise we'll continue to lose things like this over time. They need to involve groups like us who want to preserve the town's history and not just ignore us and hope we'll go away.

"We will now be doing all we can to salvage what's left after this devastating fire so that people can celebrate Swindon's past. I'll chain myself to what's left of the building before I let them just destroy it for 'economical' reasons."