THE MEMBER of the public who spotted a fire at Bersham heritage site has been thanked by the leader of Wrexham Council for helping minimise the damage.
The quick thinking of the mystery 999 caller alerted fire crews before last week’s blaze did irreparable damage to the former Bersham Heritage Centre.
As a result Wrexham County Borough Council leader Cllr Mark Pritchard has now confirmed the building will be restored.
“We’ve lost a small percentage of the building that we will rebuild and put back together,” he said. “Whoever phoned the fire service a big thank you to them.
“As the local member I’d like to thank the fire service and the officers from the council who were involved in this – the response was excellent and they were there very quickly. The most important thing was that there was no injuries or fatalities.
“They saved a lot of the building. There was some smoke damage to some artefacts. We’re looking at what that damage was but we believe it’s not a great deal.”
The former ironworks sits in the Clywedog Valley and is a prime example of Wrexham’s early industrial heritage. Historically it came to prominence when John ‘Iron Mad’ Wilkinson introduced his pioneering precision boring technique that made reliable, accurate cannons and steam engines that were less likely to explode.
It has been closed to the public for a number of years due to budget cuts but still contained a number of historic artefacts connected to Wrexham’s industrial past.
Those artefacts, which are still being examined for smoke damage, have been moved to a secret, secure location until work to restore Bersham is completed.
“We feel very confident in the security of the safe location where the artefacts are now but we felt secure when the artefacts were at Bersham,” said Wrexham Council’s Interim Chief Executive Alwyn Jones.
“We did have security monitoring the site but I guess sometimes you can’t always account for what may happen.
“As Mark said, big thanks to the fire service who dealt with the blaze in a way that was effective and respected the nature of the site and those artefacts that were in there.”
