Sunderland Fire Station: A history of bravery, Blitz and (possibly) Beatles

In 1898, a huge fire destroyed Havelock House and the Queen’s Hotel, which stood on the corner of High Street West and Fawcett Street.

Remarkably, no one was killed, but 50 buildings were damaged.

In 1904, Kennedy’s department store, a hundred metres or so further up High Street West, met the same fate.

Clearly a better fire station, in a better location, closer to Sunderland’s centre, was needed.

At a cost of £40,700 (about £5.5 million today), land was bought near the Dun Cow pub, on Dun Cow Street (although few people realise that it’s called that) for a new station occupying 632 square yards, a police HQ and a magistrates’ court.

Designed by Fawcett Street architects, brothers William and Thomas Ridley Milburn, the state-of-the-art station had electric lights throughout, with dormitories and other facilities for the firemen (firefighters were all men back then).

An alarm system directly connected the station to important buildings in the town, such as police offices, music halls and theatres.

In the early days a total of 20 firemen were employed there, while behind the station was a separate block where married firefighters and their families lived. It was demolished in the 1970s.

There were also stables. At the opening of the station in 1908, a year after the Empire Theatre, it was presented with a “horsed ambulance” paid for by public subscription.

World Wars and technological leaps

Also drawn by horse were steamers, which evolved into fire engines, and extension ladders. One ladder was in service until the 1960s, by which time it had become warped. Half a century of use had been squeezed out of it, so it was conceded that the brigade had perhaps had their money’s worth.

The station bought what we was more akin to a modern fire engine, i.e. it had a motor and not a horse, in 1916. It cost £1,000, equivalent to £100,000 in 2022. It must have seemed as the Space Shuttle does to us.

Nevertheless, it was almost destroyed by a German Zeppelin bombing raid while it was parked at Monkwearmouth Station in 1916. More than 20 people were killed.

Trivia aficionados may be interested to know that the brass helmets worn by Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew and the lads were a total anachronism. In Sunderland the brass headgear was replaced by leather helmets in 1936, giving greater protection against electrical hazards.

Indeed, by 1939 fire fighting equipment generally had improved massively since the station first opened. This was just as well because fire brigades were more important than ever during the Blitz, not least on heavily bombed Wearside.

Superintendent Thomas Bruce received a George Medal after carrying out a heroic rescue when a German bomber crashed in Hendon.

Another notable fire for the station to deal with started when a bomb struck Binns department store, the part that is now Wilkinson’s, in 1944. It was ingeniously dowsed using water pumped from Mowbray Park’s duck pond.

In 1942, with the war at its peak, Fulwell Fire Station was opened due to increased demand. It was demolished in 2020, but had also been struck by a bomb only a fortnight after it opened.

Sunderland Fire Brigade and the Beatles slide down the pole (possibly)

The Fire Services Act 1947 put the brigades back under the control of local authorities and in 1948 Sunderland Fire Brigade was formed, with the Dun Cow Street station as its main base and Thomas Bruce GM in charge.

In 1974 Sunderland Fire Brigade merged with those of South Shields & Tynemouth, Northumberland, Newcastle & Gateshead and some of County Durham.

They jointly became the Tyne & Wear Metropolitan Fire Brigade, then in 2004 the Tyne & Wear Fire and Rescue Service, which it remains today, even though there is no longer any such county as Tyne & Wear.

For the Dun Cow Street fire station it was business as usual until it finally closed. But one story from the 1960s is too good to omit; even if it is far from established fact.

The Beatles, a popular beat combo outfit of the time, performed in Sunderland three times. The probably apocryphal story goes that the band were swamped by the obligatory screaming girls and, after a 1963 Empire Theatre gig, hid upstairs in the fire station next door.

The Fab Four’s only means of escape was supposedly to slide down the fireman’s pole, then leap into a getaway van.

The story sounds suspiciously like an urban myth, yet it persists almost 60 years later. Still, it isn’t completely unfeasible so if anyone is able to corroborate or debunk the tale, we would be happy to hear from them.

Decline and resurrection

The Dun Cow Street Fire Station would never be used for its original purpose after 1992, when operations and engines transferred to the modern Sunderland Central Fire Station, in Railway Row, behind the Museum Vaults pub.

The old station stood mothballed for over 20 years, with many a Wearsider thinking what a waste of a fine building that was.

But everyone in Sunderland surely now knows what happened next. In 2016 the MAC Trust – people with enthusiasm, a love of the city an an abundance of vision – put proposals to the council to create the Cultural Quarter with the former station as its hub.

Today the building is something to be proud of. It houses the Engine Room bar and restaurant, dance studio and now the superb adjoining Auditorium.

But it remains recognisably a fire station. This is not just because it is pointedly, but simply, called The Fire Station. Even without signage, inside and out, it’s obvious what it was.

It celebrates the past as much as the present. Not all of Sunderland’s great buildings are razed to the ground.

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