What is a dealegon when it is at home? Well, there is the point: it never is at home. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is a neighbour whose house has caught fire, and who has thereby been rendered homeless.

Having been one myself a few years ago I now have huge sympathy for a couple of dealegons now roaming about my particular neck of the woods following a spate of fires round here.

What with an excellent fire service these days (I remember firefighters arrived at our house within quarter of an hour of my ringing 999), and an insurance industry that by and large functions fairly well, the word has fallen into disuse.

But in past centuries ruined dealegons were constantly being thrown on their parishes for financial support.

Fire is no respecter of persons. At Blenheim Palace fire destroyed a notable painting by Rubens when much of the south side of the north-east courtyard, formerly the Orangery (and now again known by that name) went up in flames.

That particular range of buildings was, between 1797 and 1840, a private theatre seating 200 guests; and coincidentally it was amateur theatricals that caused the destruction of the mansion at the vanished village of Wheatfield, near Watlington, on New Year’s Day 1814.

Here an accident occurred while the family — one of whom was a daughter of that keen amateur dramatist the fourth Duke of Marlborough — had been celebrating with some genteel play acting.

Another fire at Blenheim, in 1896, damaged the allegorical ceiling by Laguerre in the Saloon. Shortly after that, the largely self-sufficient Palace — which before the First World War already had its own generating plant producing hydro-electricity from the lake — instituted its own fire brigade too.

In Oxford itself, it seems that dealegons must sometimes have been in the majority. Already in 1002 there was the horrific and deliberate burning of the church of St Frideswide’s Priory, on the site of what is now Christ Church, with hundreds of Danes inside it.

In 1138, more or less the entire city burned to the ground.

Then, no sooner had the inhabitants rebuilt it than King Stephen, wrathful at the escape of Matilda, his rival for the English crown, torched it again in 1142.

So many more fires followed, notably in 1190 and 1236, that it is a wonder that any very early buildings survive at all.

During the 17th century Civil War, the Royalist forces burned much of the western part of the city as a defensive measure. In 1654, Oxford Corporation — forerunner of the city council — bought its first fire engine and at last began requiring parishes to keep rudimentary firefighting equipment such as buckets, ladders, hooks etc to hand.

By 1845, nine of the city’s 15 fire engines were owned by the university or by individual colleges.

The other six were owned by the city, the county, Oxford University Press, the parishes of St Mary the Virgin and St Michael at the North Gate, and the Sun Insurance Company, whose mark can still be seen today on some of Oxford’s buildings.

Amazingly, given the city’s record, the city and county disposed of their fire engines in 1854, leaving only a private firefighting force.

Not until 1870, when two people died in a fire, was the public volunteer service restored, operating in conjunction with a police firefighting force until 1887.

It opened its headquarters at a new fire station in New Inn Hall Street in 1873.

The 60 volunteers moved to George Street in 1896 and became professionals in 1940.

The headquarters of the fire service moved to Rewley Road in 1971.