The alarms started clanging at 2:30am that Sunday morning. Each of the volunteer firemen in the village had a bell fitted in their house, to alert them to when they were needed at the station. In a rush, Barry Heaton got himself ready; within minutes he was out of the front door and running to join his crewmates at the fire station on Debden Road. Eric Byford was already there, having switched on the station lights and started up the communications equipment. Barry heaved open the metal concertina doors and started to put on his gear.

At first, Barry couldn't believe it when Eric shouted that the fire was at Shortgrove Hall. Shortgrove was a constant backdrop to village life. Built in 1684 for Giles Dent, it stood at the top of a hill to the north of the village, reached through ornate iron gates and across a classically designed bridge over the river Cam. The house was now empty, the Butler family having sold it a few years earlier to a Mr Geoffrey Allen. Barry remembered that Mr Allen lived at Duddenhoe End and had not yet moved in to Shortgrove. It must be a false alarm, surely?

It wasn’t. “We drove through the main gates past the Lodge and over the old bridge”, Barry later remembered, “and then in front of us, between the oak trees, was a scene we shall never forget.” The entire house was ablaze, and it was serious. “On every storey flames were pouring out of every window, with very little smoke.” Arthur Butler, the son of the previous owners, was staying that evening at his parents’ new house in the grounds of Shortgrove Hall. He vividly recalled the conflagration: “A huge ball of flame was shooting out of the front door and was curling upwards and backwards over the roof. The heat was intense, but the really terrifying thing was the noise of the flames – like two express trains passing simultaneously through a station.”

Immediately the fire crews set to work, connecting the hoses to the water mains. As well as Barry Heaton and Eric Byford, up to sixty firemen and a dozen pumps were called to the house from across north-west Essex and east Hertfordshire, from Thaxted, Stansted, Bishop's Stortford, and Harlow.