TODAY marks the 200-year anniversary of the Great Fire of Edinburgh – one of the capital’s most destructive blazes that raged for five days.
The monumental fire started 200 years ago today, on 15 November 1824, when a pot of linseed oil spilled, setting light to a stack of paper in James Kirkwood’s engraving workshop in the city centre.
The resulting blaze spread quickly into an area of the High Street, near South Bridge, where it would go on to cause £200,000 of damage to the city in the five days that it lasted.
At least 400 Edinburgh families were left homeless and 13 people were killed as a result of the fire.
The inferno required 22 fire engines to fight it – with the city’s permanent fire brigade reportedly having only been set up two months prior.
James Braidwood, only 24 at the time, headed up the efforts to establish the world’s first municipal fire service, the Edinburgh Fire Establishment.
Braidwood was educated at Edinburgh High School and trained as a surveyor, where he took a special interest in construction and the ways that fire spreads in buildings.
Prior to his appointment as fire master of the service, firefighting was undertaken by fire insurance companies.
Braidwood was granted £1,400 by a committee to improve the city’s fire services, equivalent to £80,500 today.
With the money and his new remit, Braidwood managed a team of 80 men – made up of carpenters, slaters, masons, plumbers and even mariners – operating three engines.
The team was given uniforms consisting of leather helmets, white trousers and blue jackets.
The blaze was a metaphorical baptism of fire for Braidwood and his team, who hadn’t even received their full training yet, as they arrived quickly on the scene in their custom-built horse-drawn fire engines.
However, they struggled to locate a water supply and by the time they began tackling the blaze, it had spread quickly to adjoining buildings, with four tenements ablaze by midnight.
The Old Assembly Hall was destroyed overnight and the spire on the Tron Kirk caught fire the next day, sending molten lead pouring down below.
A secondary outbreak occurred in buildings in the area now known as Parliament Square, with efforts quickly refocused on stopping the fire reaching St Giles Cathedral.
The flames were eventually brought under control on 17 November thanks to a downpour of rain, but small outbreaks continued, and it was only on 19 November that the final smouldering was extinguished.
The disaster led to an inquiry which resulted in city fire masters being given full command of firefighting incidents, and Braidwood’s expertise and original ideas of practical organisation and methodology were adopted throughout Britain in the following years.
Later Braidwood moved to London where he brought together 17 fire insurance companies to create the London Fire Engine Establishment on 1 January 1833.
Braidwood sadly died in London fighting a fire alongside his men in 1861 when an explosion resulted in him being crushed under a wall.
A statue of Braidwood was erected in Edinburgh’s Parliament Square in 2008 honouring his contributions to the city’s new fire service it has an inscription reading: “Father of the British Fire Service.”
