Trevor Disley

The law of unintended consequences....

This is what happened....
I originally set up this website to sell my book (see below) but having done that I realised that I could also show some of the old photos of Coggeshall that I have been collecting over the years. As it happened, the photographs have taken over and my poor old book has been pushed to the back!


The Centenary Party that Wasn't - or Another Coggeshall Job
In 2003 we organised a party at the fire station to celebrate the centenary of our Fire Brigade. Nearly everyone with a connection to the station past and present, came along. As Officer in Charge, I gave a short talk about the highlights of the past century and finally, to rousing cheers, the Chair of the Fire Authority and the Deputy Chief Fire Officer unveiled an (expensive) commemorative plaque. The problem was - it was not our centenary!
One of the photographs, scanned for the first time, showed the 'new' fire engine and crew and brought into focus a brass plaque fixed to the side of the machine –

Well we eventually worked out what was engraved on it: ‘Presented to the Parish Council of Great Coggeshall by the Essex and Suffolk Fire Office on the disbandment of their own brigade’. In fact, it turned out, there had been a brigade in Coggeshall since 1777 - so we weren't just a little bit out on the timing, we had missed our centenary by an embarrassing 126 years.
The result of that for me was fourteen years of research as, surprisingly, there was a lot of history to discover. It was only then that the idea came to put it all down in a book. As it turned out this was not just about the fire brigade and Coggeshall but about the wider events that shaped the story. There is very little published about the history of rural fire brigades, so some of the stuff is recorded for the first time. It's not all about the fire brigade though, there is plenty of other entertainment as the story is peppered with the odd, dangerous, funny and gruesome events which regularly enlivened the town over the years.






Go and buy a copy! Buy two!!
They are on sale at Normans sweet shop near the Coggeshall clock or online here: https://coghist.photium.com/my-book
or on ebay.