Fire insurance marks were metal plaques marked with the emblem of the insurance company which were affixed to the front of insured buildings as a guide to the insurance company's fire brigade.

These identification marks were used in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the days before municipal fire services were formed.

The UK marks are called 'Fire insurance plaques'. The first to use the mark was the Sun Fire Office which was established in 1710.

SIZE = 245 mm by 190 mm

British fire marks

For most of the 18th century, each insurance company maintained its own fire brigade, which extinguished fires in those buildings insured by the company and, in return for a fee to be paid later, in buildings insured by other companies

By 1825, fire marks served more as advertisements than as useful identifying marks; some insurance companies no longer issued fire marks & those that did sometimes left them up after a policy had expired

Successive combinations of fire brigades led to virtually the entire city of London being put under the protection of the London Fire Engine Est. which fought not only the fires of policy holders but those of nonsubscribers, the reason being that fires in uninsured buildings could rapidly spread to insured buildings

One feature of the insurance company funding of fire brigades survives in some Australian states & territories in the 21st Cent in that the fire brigade services are principally funded by a "fire service levy" or tax applied to all property insurance policies issued within a state

Some period specimens remain on historical buildings in the older areas of Britain's & America's cities & larger towns. Cast metal plaques were made of iron, lead, or sometimes brass

Embossed sheet metal signs were also made, as well as flat enamel signs – the latter mostly in Continental Europe in the later 19th Cent.

Period specimens may have high value among antiques collectors, leading to illicit creation of fakes

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