A FAMILY from Spencers Wood are lucky to be alive after a devastating fire tore through their farm house.
Harvey Crocker, 50, and his daughter Lottie, 23, were out when the fire, believed to have been caused by an electrical fault in the roof of the kitchen, ripped through the listed building at around 1am on Sunday, August 16.
Neighbour Jim Daniels saw the flames and heard loud bangs coming from the house and, thinking that the family were asleep inside, immediately called the fire and ambulance services to the Cross Lane address.
Mr Crocker said: “Thankfully I was out with my son, Oscar, and my girlfriend, Natasha, at a bar in Reading.
“I had been out for the night with friends. I came back home earlier in the evening and was not going to go back out but my friend phoned me and said, ‘Why don’t you come in to town?’ My friend has saved my life by the look of things or I would have been in bed and may not have been here today.
“We didn’t know anything about the fire until we arrived back home in a taxi and saw all the fire crews.
“My first thought was for our seven-month-old puppy, Billy, who was still inside.”
The terrier Jack Russell cross usually sleeps in the kitchen and conservatory, but had made his way upstairs to get away from the fire.
Mr Crocker said: “As our next door neighbour Jim had told the fire crews there may be people inside, they had gone upstairs to look in the bedrooms, and they found Billy.
“He is absolutely fine, he’s been checked over and he’s fine, he was helping us look around the house on Monday. We’re so relieved he’s OK.
“We have lost absolutely everything, I didn’t even have a pair of workboots to put on on Monday morning. From a business point of view we are snookered – all of the files have been destroyed and everything that was backed up on the computer has been destroyed. It’s all gone, but we’ll build it back up.
“For security reasons I can’t leave the farm, so we have been staying in the cab of an articulated lorry that is on site, but early estimates by the insurance company suggest that we won’t be back in the house for at least 18 months so I will probably buy a mobile home to put on the site.”
Mr Crocker’s farm, which is known as Crosslane Farm, supplies hay to the equine industry, and is home to around 200 beef cattle. Only the farm house was damaged in the blaze.
He said: “We’ve lost photos of the kids, and an old photo collage of my father. It doesn’t matter, the main thing is that we’re all safe and no-one got hurt.
“The emergency services all did a fantastic job and I would sincerely like to thank them for what they did.
“It could have been a lot worse.”
Crews from Wokingham Road, Caversham Road, Dee Road and Whitley Wood fire station initially attended the blaze, and a pump from Wokingham attended later. Eight firefighters doused the flames, which took around four hours to bring under control.
