‘Everything had gone’: riders watch in horror as fire sweeps through stables

Riders who lost “everything but the hay and the wheelbarrow” when a devastating fire swept through their yard said they are just lucky their horses were unscathed.

Michelle Marriot and her partner Frazer Guy arrived at their yard in Nottinghamshire on Tuesday (4 March) to find the fire brigade already there, and their tack room and stables destroyed.

Michelle told H&H that luckily, their horses Bonnie and Clyde were in the fields at the time.

“Everything else can be replaced,” she said. “You can’t replace your life.”

A fundraising page has been set up to support Michelle and Frazer.

Michelle said she and Frazer had a phone call at just after midday to say there was smoke coming from their yard.

“Luckily we run our own business, two to three minutes away, so we started driving,” she said. “We saw smoke first but thought it was coming from the wrong direction – then came round the roundabout and saw it was coming from the yard, and it was black.”

Michelle thanked the off-duty firefighter who had called the fire service; two crews were already at the yard by the time they got there.

“As soon as I got there, I was over the fence ‘Where are the horses?’” she said. “They were right there but I couldn’t really process it at first. Then I just stood there, staring: ‘That’s gone, that’s gone’ – everything had gone.”

Michelle said they had a shipping container as a tack room with solar panels on the roof to charge batteries.

“What’s supposed to happen, and always had happened, is that once the batteries are charged, it’s supposed to stop,” she said. “But this time, for whatever reason, it didn’t stop charging them and the batteries blew up.

“The fire must have contained itself for a while as it was in a metal box but the stables were right next to it, so it went through all four. There was a water tank at the other end, which had started melting, but luckily it hadn’t got to our hay. All the straw’s gone as that was in one of the stables, but we’ve got the hay – hay and a wheelbarrow left, and that’s it.”

Michelle added that had the malfunction occurred overnight, when the horses were in, the story could have been far worse.

She said Bonnie had a lightweight rug on but everything else; saddles, bridles, rugs, feed and everything else they owned, was in the tack room. She estimates the equipment lost was worth £3-4,000, not to mention the stables.

“We haven’t really looked into it yet but we know a really good joiner so we’re going to look at beg, steal and borrow!” she said. “Buying a new block like that would be £6-7,000.”

A friend, Roy Boulton, has set up a GoFundMe page for Frazer and Michelle, which has already raised nearly £2,900, for which Michelle said they are enormously grateful.

“The horse world can be bad sometimes – but we know when to come together, don’t we?” she said.

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