Charles Goad Fire Insurance Maps

Charles Goad’s fire insurance maps show London property by property: what each building was made of, how many storeys it had...

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Charles Goad’s fire insurance maps show London property by property: what each building was made of, how many storeys it had, who occupied it and what hazards lay inside. From Soho’s rag trade to Fleet Street’s presses and Hoxton’s cabinetmakers, they record how London earned its living, enjoyed itself and kept reinventing its streets. Goad founded his business in Montreal in 1875 and made London his base from 1885. His plans, drawn at 40 feet to the inch for insurers, were never published in the ordinary sense. Pasted correction slips kept them current with new occupiers, bomb damage, demolition and rebuilding, so one sheet can span decades of change. Some buildings had unexpected later lives. A Booth’s gin warehouse on Clerkenwell Road became Turnmills, the legendary nightclub. The Saville Theatre, where Jimi Hendrix played Sgt Pepper’s title track to Paul McCartney and George Harrison in 1967, appears as the ABC cinemas it became. Most of these original sheets come from Goad’s Insurance Plan of London, printed from the 1880s and corrected into the early 1970s. They cover the West End, the City, Clerkenwell, Shoreditch, the South Bank, Southwark, Camden and Paddington, alongside plans of Bristol, Gloucester Docks and Kingston, Jamaica.

Charles Goad’s fire insurance maps show London property by property: what each building was made of, how many storeys it had, who occupied it and what hazards lay inside. From Soho’s rag trade to Fleet Street’s presses and Hoxton’s cabinetmakers, they record how London earned its living, enjoyed itself and kept reinventing its streets. Goad founded his business in Montreal in 1875 and made London his base from 1885. His plans, drawn at 40 feet to the inch for insurers, were never published in the ordinary sense. Pasted correction slips kept them current with new occupiers, bomb damage, demolition and rebuilding, so one sheet can span decades of change. Some buildings had unexpected later lives. A Booth’s gin warehouse on Clerkenwell Road became Turnmills, the legendary nightclub. The Saville Theatre, where Jimi Hendrix played Sgt Pepper’s title track to Paul McCartney and George Harrison in 1967, appears as the ABC cinemas it became. Most of these original sheets come from Goad’s Insurance Plan of London, printed from the 1880s and corrected into the early 1970s. They cover the West End, the City, Clerkenwell, Shoreditch, the South Bank, Southwark, Camden and Paddington, alongside plans of Bristol, Gloucester Docks and Kingston, Jamaica.

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