Showing posts with label Brussels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brussels. Show all posts

Monday, 23 October 2023

The lost 1950’s collection ....... No1 catching the tram in Brussels

Now like all good things the lost 1950’s collection was not really lost just misplaced.

The collection was passed onto me by a friend and in the midst of redecorating the house last Christmas were carefully stored away in the cellar and came to light this week when the said cellar was also going through a makeover.

There are about 30 picture postcards from the 1950s which are part of a bigger collection ranging from Edwardian birthday cards to a vast selection of seaside scenes from Britain, France and Belgium with a few of the Swiss Alps.

But it is the 1950s group that has caught my eye which I suppose is partly because that was the decade when I was growing up and because they have a quaintness about them which makes them look almost like today but not quite.

And to start the series, this is of the Stock Exchange in Brussels, chosen because of that tram.
Trams first came to the city in 1869 and the first electric one 25 years later.

Over time the livery of the trams has changed but in the 1920s they were given a primrose colour which lasted till the mid 1990s.

Location; Brussels

Picture; the Stock Exchange, Brussels, circa 1950 from the collection of  Ron Stubley

Thursday, 17 November 2022

Buying your insurance from the Boulevard Anspach in Brussels ………

Now it began with this impressive list of offices of the The Gresnam Life Assurance Society Ltd, which my friend Barbarella came across on the Boulevard Anspach in Brussels.

Now I don’t have a date but I know that the company were established in 1848.

And that “They were based at St Mildred's House, Poultry in 1901 and later at Aldwych House, Holborn. 

It was taken over by Legal and General Assurance Society in 1934, and sold in 1973. In 1975 the company’s head offices were moved to Bournemouth. In 1992 it was taken over by Windsor Life Assurance”.*

So our list must date from sometime before or around 1901 given that the information board lists its headquarters at St Mildred's House, Poultry in the City of London.


The records of the Gresnam Life Assurance Society, include registers, notices, minutes, annual reports, financial accounts, valuation summaries, samples of policy forms, and papers relating to branches in Austria, Hungary, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Belgium, Canada, Egypt, South Africa, and Spain.

As well as papers of the Gresham Continental Life Assurance Society, including memorandum and articles of association, minute books and letter books.

I wish I had time to go down to London and peruse the records but I don’t.

In the meantime I can admire the entrance to what looks to have been the offices and the impressive door.

Location; Brussels

Pictures; from Barbarella Bonvento, 2022


* Gresnam Life Assurance Society, London Metropolitan Archives, https://search.lma.gov.uk/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/LMA_OPAC/web_detail/REFD+CLC~2FB~2F144-10?SESSIONSEARCH