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This wooden fire engine belonged to the town of Knaresborough and is typical of the small manual engines made in the 18th century. It was made made by 'Phillips, Surreyside of Blackfriars bridge, London.' Samuel Phillips was making fire engines by 1760 and in 1797 the firm became Phillips and Hopwood. The company would also have made pumps for other purposes. The engine bears the date 1774.

This engine would have been pushed to a fire. The leather hose was attached to the top and sevral men would have need to take turns pumping the handles, whilst a man directed the jet of water at the fire.

During the medieval period many towns and cities simply burned down because the building materials used at the time were mainly wood. The Great Fire of London in 1666 changed people's attitude and helped standardise urban firefighting. After the fire property developer Nicholas Barbon introduced the first kind of insurance cover against fire. He formed his own fire brigade in an effort to keep the number of insurance claims down. In this periodfire fighting equipment was very basic, but in 1721 Richard Newsham patented a 'new water engine for the quenching and extinguishing of fires'.