TREE ON FIRE.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20899, 5 July 1933, Page 8

TREE ON FIRE.

ANCIENT WILLOW DAMAGED. One of the finest of the old weeping-willows growing along the banks of the Avon in Hagley Park was found to be on fire late yesterday afternoon, and although immediate measures were taken to save the ancient tree, so much damage was done to its decayed and hollowed bole, that a high wind will probably complete its destruction. The tree, which for many years has spread its great branches over the Avon, grows a short way along the river from the Carlton bridge, almost opposite Bishopscourt, on the park side of the river, and is easily distinguished by its great size. The fire was noticed shortly after 4.30 p.m., and a fireman from the St. Albans Fire Station arrived soon afterwards. But by that time the flames were leaping from a hole high up in the trunk of the tree, providing an unusual, and in the gathering dusk, strange sight, and, since the fireman was armed with nothing more than a hand-pump and a canvas bucket, he had a difficult task. Saving the Willow. Por nearly an hour the fireman, without help for most of the time, carried water from the river and pumped or threw it into the tree, and only his energy saved the old willow, for the dry interior wood .surrounding the hollowed out trunk gave the flames a strong hold, and only by climbing up to the hole from which the smoke and steam were emitted, could the work of quelling the fire be completed. Two hours after steam was still coming from the tree, and the sympathetic fireman again inspected it. But he declared that the fire had been extinguished. The great hole inside the tree, large enough to hide a man, is now badly burnt and blackened, and it seems certain that the fire, the origin of which is not known, has shortened by some years the life of one of the city's finest trees.