Aviva has mined more than three centuries of its own records to retrace the London Marathon route, pinpointing the properties, trades and personalities its insurance policies once protected along the 26.2-mile course.
The British insurer, whose roots stretch back to 1696, said the archive reveals how Londoners lived, worked and safeguarded their assets over the centuries, with some client relationships running for more than 300 years.
Much of that paper trail sits inside the Aviva Group Archive, regarded in the industry as the UK's most significant insurance collection. A long-running digitisation project has so far captured around 550,000 Hand in Hand fire policy entries dating from 1697 to the mid-19th century.
Near the Greenwich Park start line, Ranger's House, now familiar to television audiences as the fictional Bridgerton family home, was insured for £4,000 in 1740 by MP John Stanhope.
Figures from the Bank of England's inflation calculator place that cover at well over £1 million in today's money. Close by once stood Montagu House, a royal residence insured by the Duke of Montagu in 1749 and demolished in 1815.
At mile four, the course skirts Westcombe Park, former home of Georgian actress Lavinia Fenton, who took out a £4,000 policy with Hand in Hand Fire & Life Insurance Society in 1755. Best known as Polly Peachum in The Beggar's Opera, she later married the 3rd Duke of Bolton.
The Thames-side stretch around mile six captures 18th-century trades from bakers to rope makers, while a 1754 policy on The Ferry House pub on the Isle of Dogs survives in the files at mile 16. At mile 23, an 18th-century document records The London Coal Exchange insured for £4,000.
The course finishes beside Buckingham Palace. In 1787, Aviva insured Carlton House for £30,000 for the Prince of Wales, the future King George IV, a sum equivalent to more than £5 million today. Proceeds from its 1827 demolition helped fund the conversion of Buckingham House into the present palace.
Hand in Hand was founded at Tom's Coffee House in St Martin's Lane in November 1696, one of three fire insurers set up in the wake of the Great Fire of London.
As previously documented, the society ran its own uniformed fire brigade for 135 years before folding into the London Fire Engine Establishment in 1833, and was absorbed by Commercial Union in 1905.
Later tie-ups with Norwich Union, founded in 1797, and General Accident, founded in 1885, eventually formed CGNU, which rebranded as Aviva in 2002.
"While London has evolved, the need to protect what matters most has remained a constant," said Anna Stone, group archivist at Aviva.
