Firefighters wearing breathing apparatus carry two model carts from what used to be the museum at Brooklands Farm. (Pictures by Steve Sarre, 0598701)

FARMING tools dating back more than 100 years went up in smoke yesterday when Graham Dorey’s barn caught fire. The 53-year-old’s museum at Brooklands Farm in King’s Mills, Castel, housed agricultural and dairy hand tools.

Mr Dorey said his father, Len, who died 10 years ago, had gathered the tools throughout his working life and would have been devastated to have lost them.

‘It’s a museum of old implements that my father had collected over his lifetime and a lot of them have gone,’ said the husband of Linda and father of two daughters, Emily, 21, and Lucy, 18.

He said the barn and the tools were insured. ‘It’s the historic value that has been lost, though,’ he said.  The museum used to be open to visitors. It closed after numbers dropped, he said. The attraction has not now been open for a couple of years, but the family have still kept all of the artefacts.