A family's tales of going to blazes

No, it was not a request made in frustration, but in pleading and anxiety because the Sayces then ran one of Worcester's two main fire brigades - the Norwich Union. The other was operated by the City Police Force.

I've been learning about the Sayce family from the widow of William (Willie) Sayce, whose grandfather, Alfred Sayce, was captain of the Norwich Union Fire Brigade at Worcester for many years and a widely-respected and familiar figure in the Faithful City.

I came to interview Mrs June Sayce at her home off Bath Road, Worcester, as a result of a photograph I recently reproduced for my Journal Journey feature in Berrow's Journal. It showed the crew and volunteers aboard a Norwich Union fire engine at Worcester in 1916, for a charity fund-raising event.

Mrs Sayce recognised the photograph featured her husband's grandfather, father, mother and an aunt. She had not seen it before and asked if I could supply a copy, which I duly did.

Advertisements in Berrow's Journal a century ago and earlier, informed Worcester citizens that the district managers of the Norwich Union Fire offices in Worcester, were Messrs Watkins & Sayce of Angel Place. Their offices were alongside the Norwich Union Fire Engine Station which stood opposite the Angel Street Congregational Church (now Tramps Night Club). The Sayce family lived at that time on the upper floors above the Angel Place offices of Watkins & Sayce.

Before becoming "motorised," the Norwich Union fire engines were drawn by actual horse power, and the sturdy steeds were kept at the nearby Tustins' Stables in The Butts.

Alfred Sayce was a partner in Watkins & Sayce, the insurance brokers who, of course, dealt mainly in Norwich Union insurance policies.

In those times, house insurance policy holders displayed Norwich Union metal name plates on the front of their homes so that the company's fire brigade could identify them when a fire alarm was raised.

A few of those Norwich Union name plates are still to be seen on houses in Worcester today.

As captain, Alfred Sayce was in charge of the Norwich Union Fire Brigade for about 20 years and during that time, there were many newspaper reports of the courage and expertise of his fire crews in tackling blazes in and around the city.

However, there was one day in his time at the helm that Captain Sayce and the Norwich Union would clearly have liked to have forgotten.

What happened was this: In the spring of 1901, the Norwich Union decided to pension off the horse which pulled one of their fire engines and had this appliance converted to "motor propulsion."

The only trouble was that conversion work had not quite been completed when a call was received to attend a fire on a farm at Kempsey. A vital missing part was a "spark protector."

The outcome was what Berrow's Journal headlined as An Engine's Untoward Journey - A Chapter of Accidents.

It was, in reality, a comedy of errors, reminiscent of The Keystone Cops.

The motorised fire engine sent sparks flying out everywhere and caused six more fires on its way to Kempsey, also setting a woman cyclist's blouse alight in High Street!

The additional fires caused by the showers of sparks destroyed a large load of straw and the wagon carrying it in Bath Road, the hedges and railings of three houses, and two ricks of straw at Clerkenleap.

And Berrow's Journal told of the final indignity: "The fire-engine travelled speedily and, to that extent justified itself, the journey to Kempsey being made in 20 minutes.

"But once there, the engine broke down entirely through the bursting of a water tube in the boiler. Fortunately, the Norwich Union had also sent out its manual horse-driven fire appliance with all the necessary apparatus for extinguishing fires.

"The motor fire-engine was brought back to Worcester late in the evening, pulled by two horses. As may be imagined, the incidents occasioned much excitement. Many people assembled along the engine's return route, and in Bath Road the crowd was dense."

The London firm of Merryweather were later to build the Norwich Union's pristine and far less explosive fire engines!

Captain Sayce's son, Alfred William was also a leading member of the Norwich Union fire brigade for several years, becoming its Second Officer. He also joined his father in the firm of Watkins & Sayce, taking over as a partner on his father's death.

Alfred William Sayce married Clarice Bladder of the well-known Worcester family who ran a cycle and motor cycle business in Sidbury through most of the 20th Century.

However, not happy in his business partnership, Alfred William Sayce set up in business on his own as an insurance broker from his home, set in several acres of grounds off Bath Road, Worcester. Alas, he died there in 1945 at the age of 59.

Son William (Willie), Alfred and Clarice's only child, was just 20 at the time but took over his father's business and ran it successfully until retiring in the 1980s.

Willie, born at the family home at Bath Road, in 1924, was educated at The King's School, Worcester, and was a Cathedral chorister for a time. In the war years, King's School pupils had to be evacuated and were given two choices - either to transfer to the Royal Grammar School or go as boarders to a public school at Criccieth, North Wales. Willie chose the latter.

In 1958, he married "Worcester bred and born" June Pearce from another long-established local family. In the early part of the 20th Century, her grandfather William Pearce had owned stables and a garage at Bransford Road, near the junction with St John's and Malvern Road.

"Originally, he had black horses for funerals and white horses for weddings, but with the arrival of motor vehicles, developed a taxi service," says Mrs Sayce.

William's son, Arthur, Mrs Sayce's father, saw active service in the First World War and, with brother Tom, joined his father in the garage business in 1918. However, when William Pearce died in the mid-1930s, his two sons decided they did not wish to continue the garage business and closed it down.

By this time, Arthur Pearce had married Gladys Witts of a Kempsey family and set up home in Middle Road, St John's, where daughter June was born. The family later moved to St Anne's Road, in the north of the city, and Arthur went to work for some years at the Austin Motor Works, Longbridge.

At the time of her marriage to Willie Sayce, June Pearce was a tracer in the drawing office of the large engineering firm, Alley & MacLellan in Bromyard Road, Worcester, and she remained with the company until it closed in 1963.

This was the same year as the death of Mrs Clarice Sayce, her husband's mother, who lived with them at Bath Road.

It was then that Willie and June Sayce turned more to "an outdoor life" which they "greatly loved." They developed a smallholding on the acres they owned, adjoining their home, and June began breeding donkeys.

Two of them, Dot and Sally, are still June's treasured pets today, though they are now "old ladies" at 27 and 25 years of age.

Willie and June also bought a motor cruiser in 1966, and moored it on the Avon. In fact, they became leading and active volunteers of the Lower Avon Navigation Trust for several years.

"We worked extremely hard as volunteers and were in charge of the Pershore Lock - the deepest on the Avon. We were also volunteer lock-keepers at weekends. It was all so exciting and we really enjoyed it," says Mrs Sayce.

Alas, Willie Sayce died at his Bath Road in April, last year, at the age of 75.

As he was born and died in the same house, his ashes were buried in the garden together with those of his much loved Doberman, Heidi.

Acorns grow from land gift

AS I chatted to Mrs June Sayce at her home, we looked out over the three acres of open land she and her late husband Willie have given as a remarkably generous gift to the community.

They constantly turned down the chance of netting a small fortune by selling-off the land to hungry developers for house building. Instead, a desperately needed public facility is to go up on the site - a children's hospice to serve families in Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.

For much of their 42 years of marriage, June and Willie Sayce derived great pleasure from the "outdoor life" afforded by the three acres of land alongside their home. They tended it as a smallholding, and June bred donkeys there and also kept other pets.

But the couple, who have no immediate family, were always adamant in saying "no houses" whenever developers approached them about buying the land.

"Instead, Willie and I were determined to put something back into the community in return for the good life we had enjoyed, and our goal came sharply into view when our family solicitor David Hallmark told us that the Acorns Children's Hospice Trust was searching for a site in Worcester.

"We knew almost at once that this was what we wanted - a children's hospice on our land," recalls Mrs Sayce. "Soon after we signed over the land to Acorns, Willie said to me: 'June, I know what I want, I want Acorns here, and if I die tomorrow I know everything is in order.' He died later that day!"

Mike Cartledge, Acorns Worcester Project Manager, joined us while I was interviewing Mrs Sayce and stressed the "incredible generosity" of June and Willie in giving the land to the Trust. Without this gift, Acorns would have had to pay around £1m for a comparable three-acre plot.

"It's a beautiful site and so ideally situated for our needs in serving Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire," explained Mike Cartledge. "It's close to the Worcester Southern Link and the M5 and M50, giving excellent access from all parts of the Three Counties."

A prime objective of Acorns has always been to build a hospice in South Worcestershire for children with life-limiting conditions, but financial forecasts had predicted this would not be possible until 2007 or 2008. However, everything has changed since local millionaire benefactor Cecil Duckworth pledged £750,000 to the project and the Sayces gifted the land.

Last autumn, Worcester City Council also gave unanimous planning permission to the detailed design and landscaping scheme for the Bath Road development, and the target completion date for the £4m 10-bedroom children's hospice has now been brought forward to early 2004.

Incidentally, June Sayce's two surviving donkeys Dot and Sally are not to be put out to pastures new but are to be kept as part of the hospice. Paddocks are to be provided for them in the grounds of the development so that the youngsters can enjoy their company.

The proposed Worcester hospice has been designed to incorporate the ideas of care teams at Acorns' other two hospices - in Birmingham and at Walsall, West Midlands. It will not only add 10 bedrooms to the Trust's respite facilities but also ensure that families in Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire have access to the same network of support as families in other areas.

But until Acorns Worcester opens, the Trust is naturally pledged to continue providing residential respite, emergency and terminal care for life-limited children from Worcestershire and Herefordshire in its Selly Oak and Walsall units.

For more than 10 years now, Acorns' community team has been providing support in the home for children and their families in Worcestershire and Herefordshire and is now expanding into north Gloucestershire.

Acorns has retail shops in Worcester, Hereford, Ross-on-Wye, Cheltenham and Bromsgrove, to help generate funds for Acorns care, but clearly the Worcester hospice project poses an enormous challenge in fund-raising terms.

Not only will Acorns have to raise £4m as the capital cost of the project but will also have to find "sustainable income" of around £1m a year to support Acorns care with the opening of the hospice.

The Acorns' Worcester office at Marmion House in Copenhagen Street has been established to co-ordinate the project and fund raising, but quite clearly there is a pressing need for major donors and people in the community generally to follow the self-less example of Willie and June Sayce in giving vital aid to the Acorns Worcester project. The place to contact is the Acorns office at Worcester on 01905-724040.

As the Trust stresses: "This scheme has touched the hearts of local people and, with their growing and continuing support, our aspirations to enhance local care for life-limited children and their families will soon be realised."