Left two: Low Petergate, no. 60, Palenque Jewellery — plaque for County Fire Office Insurance Company. Right two: High Petergate, no. 7, Grimoire bookshop — plaque for Royal Insurance Company.
These are plaques for fire-fighting and fire insurance companies other than the Yorkshire, that is, other than the one housed in George Townsend Andrews's St Andrewgate building for the Yorkshire Fire and Life Insurance Company. In one place, High Petergate, three adjacent properties were insured by different companies – an insurance in itself, perhaps.
Left two: High Petergate, no. 5, Ashtons, estate agents — plaque for Phoenix Fire Office. Right two: High Petergate, no. 3, Naish, estate agents — plaque for Westminster Fire Office.
Left two: Minster Court. Private house — plaque for Sun Insurance Office. Right two: Goodramgate, no. 38. Shop — plaque for Sun Insurance Office.
Paul Fyfe writes: "Fire insurance emerged in England during the 1680s in consequence of the Great Fire of London, but it took on unprecedented importance for cities in the first half of the nineteenth century, particularly in the northern industrial belt" (103). Fyfe has Manchester in mind here, but urban expansion and episodes of urban disorder put all cities and neighbourhoods at risk, and the residents of York were clearly all too conscious of this.
Links to related material
- The Yorkshire Fire and Life Insurance Company, and its plaques
- Fire-fighting and fire prevention (sitemap)
- Pump Wagon (1824) in Lauriston Yard, Edinburgh
- The early days of the Edinburgh firefighting service
Photographs by the author, who would like to thank John Shaw for his information. Last paragraph, and formatting, by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or to the Victorian Web in a print document. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Bibliography
Fyfe, Paul. By Accident or Design: Writing the Victorian Metropolis. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2015.
Sotheran, Catherine. York in close up. York: Fulprint, 2017. (For help locating the plaques, see pp. 17, 59 and 74.)
Created 8 November 2022