This splendid looking one-time fire station was built for £3,000 in 1896/7 at 55 High Street in Brentford, on land bought from the Parish to a design of the surveyor to Brentford Urban District Council, Nowell Parr. Records show they offered to withdraw having underestimated the cost by £300 - a 10% margin of error. What on earth would they have made of HS2? It was opened in 1898 with much pomp and celebration; with ticket-holders able to see inside.

Old fire station in Brentford
Faced with red terracotta Doulton tiles, the drill yard was to the east and the hose tower where leather hoses were hung to dry is apparently still evident.
A horse-drawn steam pump purchased by the Urban District Council in 1890 was housed in the new fire station. Escape equipment used by the firemen involved an extended ladder system which they had to drag to the site of a fire, often leaving them exhausted and unable to perform a rescue. A horse-drawn escape replaced it in 1906, with the first motor fire engine bought in 1924.

Altered and refitted many times between the 1920s and 1950s, the fire station closed in 1965
Since then it has been used by the ambulance service up to the 1980s. In 1990 it was listed; in 2003 it became “The Old Fire Station” restaurant; and since 2021 it remains in it’s current guise as a Cuban bar downstairs, and a Persian restaurant upstairs.
In case you’re wondering who now is tasked with putting out fires and rescuing errant cats stricken by vertigo up trees in the area, Brentford is now served by “local” fire stations including Richmond, Heston & Isleworth and Twickenham.

Brentford fire station in 1899, a couple of years after being built
As for those firemen from Trumpton, last I heard they'd all happily retired.

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