Fire marks on listed buildings

Observing the success of the Fire Office, competitor companies were founded offering a similar service of both financial cover and brigade assistance.

London would have been unrecognisable at that time. Streets had no names, houses were not numbered, and shops didn’t always have signs, so each insurance company created their own fire mark plaque (street numbering in London was not introduced until the 1760s).

The plaques were made from lead or copper, each showing the organisation’s distinctive emblem such as clasped hands, a crown or a flaming sun with a policy number stamped below. These were put on the front of the building and placed at a height that was visible and out of reach of metal thieves.

‘Insurers’ quickly caught on to the fact that fire marks were an excellent way to advertise their company, so the insignias became more elaborate and ornamental.

See a selection of emblems, some from as early as 1710.

By the 18th century societies appeared throughout the UK including names such as the Sun Fire Office in 1710, the Union in 1714 and the Westminster in 1717. The Friendly Society and the Amicable Contributors became the Hand in Hand Fire & Life Insurance Society and they were absorbed by Commercial Union in 1905.

Firemen wore brightly coloured uniforms to distinguish themselves between the different brigades. When a building was on fire, several brigades might attend and if they did not see their specific fire mark on the building, they were known to leave it so insurance companies developed reciprocal arrangements whereby if a fire brigade put out a fire at a house insured by another company the brigade’s company would be reimbursed.

Equipment was fairly basic until 1721 when Richard Newsham patented a new ‘water engine for the quenching and extinguishing of fires’. The pump could provide a continuous stream of water and speeded up putting out the fire.

Reacting to demand, more and more insurers set up in London and by the early 1720s they had underwritten 17,000 policies totalling £10 million – enough to cover the estimated cost of property that the Great Fire had destroyed.

The Chartered Insurance Institute’s collection of fire marks contains 1,542 examples of UK and international fire marks – other countries soon followed the British system. You can take at tour here:  https://insurancehistory.cii.co.uk/insurance-hall/virtual-tour/

A fire mark is just one of the ways your listed property can showcase a part of its important history, and buildings like this need proper protection. At Abode we understand every listed property is unique and plays its own part in the UK’s history.

Image credits to:

Fire Mark images supplied by the Insurance Museum.
Fire Marks courtesy of the Aviva Archive Group.
Photographs by Lloyd Sturdy.