List members might like to be reminded that the ‘Place in the Sun’ volunteer project to index 18th and 19th century policy registers of the Sun Fire Office, originally funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, is continuing, and now ranges well beyond London. A new batch of indexes, for two separate periods, 1790-3 and part of 1839, has recently gone online on www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a. There are now more than 150 registers indexed by the project, being surviving Sun registers in the main series for the period 1790 to 1839.
Details online include the names, addresses and occupation (or status) of the insured in more than a quarter of a million policies; the addresses of other property insured; and such details of any third party occupiers as are given in the registers. Property insured at an address found in the index might be buildings or chattels, but the latter will only appear from the index itself if the chattel has a precise identity, such as a named vessel or work of art or literature. With the register and policy numbers identified from the index, further details (type of property, description, building materials, values) can be ascertained from the actual registers. These are now at London Metropolitan Archives.
The earlier registers in the series (represented by at least a tenth of the online index) range countrywide. In 1793 the Sun split the records series into two, i.e. after that time the main series, Ms. 11936, the one covered by the project, comprised mainly London-based insurers.
Entries can be found for most areas, but coverage in the earlier registers is particularly strong in the industrial north west, Scotland, East Anglia, Northamptonshire, east Kent and the west country. Industrial sites have detailed descriptions until about 1800, when the practice of reference to plans replaced verbal description.
To optimise searching for this material on A2A, use the Advanced Search screen and select ‘Guildhall Library’ (former home of the registers) as the record repository. Please bear in mind that locations and personal names are entered in the form in which they occur in the registers, however odd the spelling, though area names with modern forms use those forms (Surrey not Surry; Scotland not North Britain). Spellings of occupations are modernised (e.g. tailor, saddler). Street names without a town or city added almost invariably refer to London.
Try wild cards, variant spellings and a little imagination to get the most useful results.
Isobel Watson
Project co-ordinator
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