Automobile Association - Fleet Street, London, UK
N 51° 30.826 W 000° 06.650
30U E 700465 N 5710918
This building, now a branch of Barclay's Bank, is on the south side of Fleet Street close to the Royal Courts of Justice.
Waymark Code: WMG6A5
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 01/19/2013
Views: 14
The plaque is fixed to the wall of the
bank close to the western doorway. It reads:
AA
1905
The Automobile
Association opened
its first office in this building in the
year
1905.
This plaque was
unveiled on the 28th June 1965 by
the Right Honourable The Lord Mayor of
London
Sir James Miller, D.L., L.L.D., to mark the
Diamond Jubilee of
the Automobile Association
AA
1965
The AA's website [visit link] tells us about
the early days:
"A group of motoring enthusiasts
met at the Trocadero restaurant in London's West End on 29 June 1905 to form the
Automobile Association (the AA) – a body initially intended to champion the
cause of the motorist and particularly to help motorists avoid police speed
traps. As motoring became more popular, so did we – the AA's 100 members in 1905
grew to 83,000 by 1914. As AA membership expanded, so did our
activities.
The first AA patrols had no
uniforms and only basic pedal cycles. They worked at weekends only,
patrolling the Brighton and Portsmouth roads where their official duties were
laid down as 'indicating dangers on the road and helping motorists who had
broken down'. Uniforms were issued from 1909, by which time there were patrols
all over the country, including Scotland.
By 1912 there were 950 cyclist
patrols.
In 1907 the first AA insurance
policy was launched – arranged with Lloyds and with no profit going to the
AA. In 1906 a legal defence fund had been set up to ensure legal
representation and payment of lawyers' fees. The AA took no more active
part in motor insurance until 1967.
To cater for the increased
popularity of touring by car, the AA appointed agents and repairers throughout
the UK. 1,500 agents were listed in the AA Members' Special Handbook,
which first appeared in 1908. The first hotels were listed in the handbook
from 1909.
We introduced the first AA routes
around 1912 with handwritten details, and by 1929 we were issuing 239,000 routes
a year.
From 1912 we started inspecting and
classifying hotels. Those receiving our famous AA star classification were
included in subsequent editions of the Members' Handbook.
From the start hotel inspectors
paid for themselves and accepted no favours. The star system was derived
from the system used to classify brandy – The AA Secretary, Stenson Cooke, had
once been a wine and spirit salesman - with a three star hotel being defined as
"a really decent, average middle class hotel"."