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Originally firemarks were fixed to insured properties so that such properties could be identified.

The upper mark is from the Farmers’ Insurance Company while the lower mark is from the Sun Fire Office.

FIRE MARKS

“September 2nd (Lord’s Day). Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today, Jane called us up about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City....” So wrote Samuel Pepys in his diary in 1666. The total waste was over 13,000 houses burned down as well as the Guildhall, the Royal Exchange, 89 churches and St. Pauls. On the 7th he wrote, “Walked thence and saw all the towne burned, and a miserable sight of Pauls church with all roofs fallen.”

It was seventeen years later that a reliable fire insurance scheme started to operate. The earliest societies were ‘Friendly’ or ‘Mutual’ and the oldest Mark was produced by ‘The Friendly Society of London’. In the next fifty years there was a rapid increase of ‘Fire Offices’ and in the early days they only insured buildings, the insuring of contents coming later.

Identification of buildings in the days before the postal service was not easy and thus ‘Fire Marks’ were affixed to those insured by the companies concerned. They were decorative and eye-catching and thus an early form of advertising. The stories of firemen refusing to deal with a fire in a building covered by a rivals mark are not true. Indeed it was the co-operation of the brigades of the principal insurance companies which led to the forming of the London Fire Engine Establishment in 1833. This was taken over by Metropolitan Board of Works in 1866 after a disastrous fire in Tooley Street in 1861.

Marks were first made of lead but later copper, iron, brass, tin-plate and tinned iron were used.

Fire fighting, away from the more populous areas seems to have been a haphazard affair, relying as much on the goodwill of the local people as the proximity of water. A fire in South Street, Bridport, in April 1780 employed a hundred and one men and boys who were paid £4.8.0 between them. They consumed liquor to the value of £5. 17.10!

The war caused a serious shortage of horses and in 1915 a Daimler car, once owned by Edward VII, was purchased to tow the engine. About the same time Mr. S. Keech, who eventually served 40 years with the brigade, received a letter from Bonfields telling him that in future he would be paid 6d per hour for all shop work and 5d. for driving the fire engine.

In 1964 Mr. F.G. Parker rescued this engine from a scrap yard in Birmingham and, after restoring it, presented it to the town. It was appropriate that Mr. Keech was Mayor at the time.

In 1902 a newspaper report of a fire at Loders carried a final line which ran thus:- ‘For fire insurance rates apply to Central Insurance Co., Nicholas Lane, London. Capital £850,000. No Tariffs.’

Stories of fires in the area abound, all sworn to be true! Early on a summer’s eve a customer walked into the Blue Boar Inn at Dottery and ordered a pint of cider. When he had consumed half of it he had a sudden thought. “By the way,” he said to the landlord, “did you know your roof was on fire?”

At Powerstock a man was said to have been holding a lighted candle to the thatch at the rear of his neighbour’s cottage whilst the firemen fought the blaze in the front.

The following is an extract from “The Fireman” in 1953.

Firefighting in Uploders.
A chimney caught fire in Uploders in Dorset and was eventually put out by the Bridport Brigade. The account by the householder runs something like this:-

“Yes, there it were, ablazing away. I fought un till ‘ee got out ‘0 m’ reach, then I went to the front door and waited for the carrier to come by. ‘e were late that morn and I axed ‘im if ‘ee wouldn’t mind when ‘e were in Bridport to call at the Fire Station and axe ‘em to come out. ‘e says ‘e would but ‘ad a few parcels to deliver first. When the Firemen come they said they thought it were a hoax. They told I to be sure to send a registered letter next time.”

There are several similar stories so perhaps there’s no smoke without fire!

The following lines, also from “The Fireman”, perhaps sums up the Volunteer Fireman.

“Each day he’s busy in his village store,
Weighing out this and that for ever more.
Regretting that a grocer’s job can’t give,
The excitement that a real man needs to live.”