Doors and windows 2 - # 103
City Daily Photo encourages us to look harder at what's around us. Please look closer at the doorways and window style on these houses, built in the early 1700s. Each door has a unique glasswork fanlight. Throughout the whole town not one door fanlight is the same. Notice also the two little white badges on the wall in the very centre. Those are 18th Century "Fire Insurance Certificates". Lloyds of London was a new money market brokerage phenomenon enabling people to insure. The newly created insurance companies gave you a plate showing their badge - a Sun, an Elephant etc - to make it clear to the fire brigade that the house was protected by that company and that the firemen would be paid for their efforts to put out the fire.
hmm Lloyds of London - eighties memories - groan.... lovely buildings though.
ReplyDeleteI really like this architechture. I often used to visit our London office, just behind Park Lane, a very expensive area, with fantastic houses (and a lot Bentleys), more or less in this style. Some of them have also plates, indicating who has once lived there. (Just in front of our office was where Florence Nightingale had lived.)
ReplyDeleteAnd the doors... always well painted with shining brass decorations!
I like your photograph, of course, but the narrative spells out things I had not known before. I didn't know if you didn't have the plaque that the firemen might not put the fire out fearing they would not be paid for their efforts. Or am I reading something into this that just didn't happen?
ReplyDeleteSome people might not know that rape is not just something unique to the human animal. There are ducks just as guilty—my post today.
Insurance Cos., set up their own fire brigades and they would only touch houses bearing their mark, leaving others for the fire brigade of the rival company. However I suspect that a "franchise system" soon developed with brigades having multiple contracts. Enter "18th century fire insurance UK" into Google and you will find the detail and some interesting cases.
ReplyDeleteInteresting info Chucker - I've sat on the Green many times without ever realising this. Wish the cars weren't there - it's a nice harmonious facade
ReplyDeleteArchitecture, Insurance company, idea to put a plate... Everyting is sooooo English and at my eyes sooooo lovable !
ReplyDeleteI agree with Fabrizio: so English...!
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