Never seen a fire like it since: We tackled disastrous market blaze

Fifty years after a fire raged through Kirkgate Market in Leeds, Laura Reid hears about a heritage project telling the stories of firefighters who were on the scene.

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Retired firefighters in the photos- Trevor Leighton and Norman Field, holding Trevor's scrapbook.

Norman Field walked through the door after a long shift. “You look tired love,” his wife Eva observed. “Have you been at the fire?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “It’s been a hard job.”

“Is my shop still there?” she asked-and Norman knew instantly where she meant. They’d regularly pay a visit to a market haberdashery, collecting buttons and cotton so that Eva could make toys for their grandchildren.

“No, sorry love, it’s burnt down,” he told her. She was distraught. He knew she would be.

Norman, now 83, was one of dozens of firefighters who fifty years ago, almost to the date, arrived at Leeds’ Kirkgate Market to a blazing inferno. The fire, on December 13, 1975, was one of the city’s biggest ever disasters, taking hold shortly after the market had closed following a busy day of trading in the run up to Christmas.

Flames spread quickly throughout the halls of what was once Europe’s largest covered market, destroying businesses and ruining livelihoods in their wake. Stallholders and cleaners who were still inside fled for their lives - and remarkably, no one died in the incident. But the fire did more damage to the place than bombing raids had done years earlier during the Second World War-and two thirds of the building was destroyed.

Traders, as well as locals like Eva, found themselves mourning businesses that had served communities for generations.