Image ID: 18237

Guardian Fire Insurance plaque on gable end of 40 Main Street

Courtesy of Reg Baker

40 Main Street
Sutton Bonington
England

The plaque was a fire mark, telling firemen that this building was insured by the company whose name or emblem was illustrated on the plaque. Fire marks were always placed on the outside of a building. They are usually to be found on an old building between the first and second floors rather than on the ground floor, because this prevented the fire mark from being destroyed or removed by pranksters or children. However, in tall buildings or buildings alongside rivers, fire marks were placed high because of floods. Located well above the water line of the highest possible flood stage, the fire marks were in plain view at all times and the firemen could easily tell who insured the building. Fire marks were first used in Europe almost three hundred years ago. The fire marks identified property insured by a particular company, so that the insurance companies, which had their own fire brigades, could put out fires on properties which were marked by their own particular fire mark and if two or more brigades showed up to put out the fire, sometimes fights broke out among the firemen disputing their claim that their brigade, and their brigade alone, was the one which put out the fire. Sometimes the building burned down before the fire fighters stopped fighting each other. If the brigades arrived at a building which did not have a fire mark they occasionally turned around and went home, and the building burned down. Fire marks have been made of tin, cast iron, and lead as well as brass, copper and zinc. And some comparatively recent fire marks were made of porcelain or enamel upon iron.

Date: 1979

Organisation Reference: NCCS001289

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