Fire Mark Circle member Roy Addis lives in a flat high up on the eighth floor, with fine views. However, once through his front door, the last thought that enters your head is to look out of the windows. It is quite impossible to tear your eyes away from the walls. With the exception of the bathroom and kitchen, the walls of every room and the hall are covered with fire marks; 515 of them at the last count and no two the same.

Thirty-three years an insurance broker, in his younger days Roy collected stamps. He also collected other insurance brokers, buying no less than twenty-five broker businesses to add to his own. It was whilst negotiating for the purchase of another business that he noticed a Green Tree plaque on the wall of the broker’s office. Enquiring as to whether it was a fire mark, Roy was told that it was a reproduction mark of the American company, the Philadelphia Contributionship.

However, it transpired that the broker did have a small collection of marks and he told Roy that he could buy them if he wished. Roy did not buy the business and forgot all about the fire marks. Several months later, a cardboard box containing about 30 marks was delivered to his office. Through an introduction to Brian Sharp, Roy

“I don’t really have a favourite mark,” he answers, in response to the obvious question. “The Bristol Universal of course and I suppose the Bristol Crown with a painted number; the Salamander with No.67 on the panel; the Manchester, policy number 217; the Kent number 97; and my Norwich Union W29A. I love them all. However, if I had to choose it would be the London number 3017”

Roy’s interest however, has not just stopped at collecting marks. He is endeavouring to put together a fully illustrated definitive book on British fire marks, together with what used to be called plates. He considers that the same mark painted differently constitutes a variant, just as it does with stamps. We have already recorded in FMC News Issue No.1 the trip Roy made to America, specially to photograph Bill Evenden’s collection and a number of marks in the New York City Fire Museum. So far, he has identified and photographed over 800 variants. The photographs are then scanned on to his computer, tweaked and colour adjusted on Adobe Photoshop and Foto Tune, before being stored in Quark Express at exactly 50% scale. The end results are then printed on his Tektronix colour laser printer and the quality of the end result is, quite frankly, staggering.

One word of warning to all collectors, there are some blank spaces on his walls that Roy intends to fill in the foreseeable future. He has not completed his collection yet!

Brian Henham
Vice President
Fire Mark Circle