Wigan firefighters tackle shipping container blaze

Wigan fire crews suspect that the structure, on wasteland at the corner of Glassbrook Street and Gidlow Lane, may at one time have been used as football changing rooms.

But when they arrived to reports of a fire on 9.20pm on Friday November 10, its contents were timber and cabling, and crew manager Bryan Stewart said that by the time the blaze was out, they were “burnt to a crisp.”

He said: “At first we were told it was a fire in the open and then it was upgraded because the fire was actually coming from some sort of ‘outbuilding’ and so two pumps were sent instead.

"It may have been changing rooms at some time in the past but it looked derelict and overgrown.”

The fire is thought to have been started deliberately.