Great Fire of London
Course of the Fire
The Great Fire of London took place on 2nd September 1666 in London – just one year after the Great Plague hit London - in a huge part of the City of London covering an area from the Tower in the East to Holborn Hill in the West. The south was limited by the river Thames and in the North the fire stopped at Smithfields, Moorfields and Spitalfields. It first started in Thomas Farynor’s bakery on Pudding Lane as a small fire. Farynor was baker to King Charles II. At first the danger of the fire was underrated (the Lord Mayor allegedly said that “A woman might piss it out”), but the fire quickly expanded due to strong winds and the fact that all houses and buildings were built very closely together and that they consisted of wood which helped the fire to spread.
Loss and casualties
About 430 acres of the city were destroyed, among the destroyed buildings were 13,000 houses, 52 Guild Halls and 89 churches (among them St Paul's Cathedral). Thousands of citizens lost their homes and money.
End of the Fire
Usually fires were stopped by cutting down houses in its way to prevent the fire from spreading, so called “fire-breaks”. However, afraid of the immense costs of rebuilding the houses, Lord Mayor Blundworth did not issue such a command early enough. By the time the command was carried out, the fire has already been out of control and the following demolition of the houses only supported the fire as the debris first had to be moved away. Samuel Pepys, then Secretary of the Admiralty, heard about the fire from his maid, being the active Restoration man (one could also say busybody were it not unfair to the bustling energy of Pepys), he tries to do something against the fire:
"September 2nd: So down [I went], with my heart full of trouble, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it began this morning in the King's baker's house in Pudding Lane, and that it hath burned St. Magnus's Church and most part of Fish Street already. So I rode down to the waterside, . . . and there saw a lamentable fire. . . . Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies, till they some of them burned their wings and fell down.
Having stayed, and in an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody to my sight endeavouring to quench it, . . . I [went next] to Whitehall (with a gentleman with me, who desired to go off from the Tower to see the fire in my boat); and there up to the King's closet in the Chapel, where people came about me, and I did give them an account [that]dismayed them all, and the word was carried into the King. so I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of York what I saw; and that unless His Majesty did command houses to be pulled down, nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him, and command him to spare no houses"
Sources: < http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/great_fire_of_london_of_1666.htm> http://www.pepys.info/fire.html
The fire continued for three more days until the Duke of York and latter King James II had the Paper House torn down in order to create another fire break which in addition to a change of wind direction finally led to an end of the fire.
Aftermath
King Charles II ordered the city to be rebuilt. The buildings were to be refurbished with bricks and stone. It was Sir Christopher Wren who sent his plans to rebuild the city to the King and eventually it was him who was responsible for the restoration of about 50 churches including St. Paul’s Cathedral and it was him who was ordered to design and build The Monument (1671-1679) which still stands at the bakery where the fire broke out. The street is now called Monument Street. Right after the fire there were rumours that the Catholics were responsible for the fire - an accusation which periodically resurfaced (most notably during the Exclusion Crisis) and which was also fixed on the commemorative plaque on the Monument.
320 years later, in 1986, the small bakery issued an apology for having caused the fire.
Books on the Great Fire of London
Hanson, Neil. The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London. New York: Doubleday. 2001.
Roubard, Jacques. The Great Fire of London. Champaign: Dalkey Archive Press. 2006.
Films
"History Bites" Great Fire of London (1998), directed by Rick Green
Plague, Fire, War and Treason: The Great Fire of London (2001), directed by James Runcie
External Links
<http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/great_fire_of_london_of_1666.htm>