Great Fire of London

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The Great Fire of London was a major fire that swept through the City of London from 2am September 2-5, 1666, and resulted more or less in its destruction. (Before this fire, the fire of 1212 which destroyed a large part of the city was known by the same name.)

The fire of 1666 was one of the biggest calamities in the history of London. It destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, 6 chapels, 44 Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St Paul's Cathedral, the Guildhall, the Bridewell and other City prisons, the Session House, four bridges across the Thames and Fleet rivers, three city gates and made homeless 100,000 people, one sixth of the inhabitants at that time.

The fire started in Pudding Lane at the house of Thomas Farrinor¹, a baker to King Charles II. It is likely that the fire started because Farrinor forgot to extinguish his oven before retiring for the evening and that some time shortly after midnight, smouldering embers from the oven set alight some nearby firewood. Farrinor was woken by the fire at around 1AM. He managed to escape the burning building, along with his family, by climbing out through an upstairs window. The baker's housemaid failed to escape and became the fire's first victim.

Within an hour of the fire starting, the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, was woken with the news. He was unimpressed however, declaring that 'A woman might piss it out'.

Most buildings in London at this time were constructed of highly combustible materials (wood, straw, etc.), and sparks emanating from the baker's shop fell onto an adjacent building. Fanned by a strong wind, once the fire had taken hold it swiftly spread. The spread of the fire was helped by the fact that buildings were built very close together with only a narrow alley between them. As stated, the fire consumed a staggering 13,200 houses and 87 churches, among them the beloved St. Paul's Cathedral, but incredibly only 9–16 people are known to have died.

The Aftermath and Consequences

The fire had the beneficial effect of killing many of the rats which were responsible for the spread of the Great Plague. The fire had a marked and varied impact on English society. See Charles II of England, Christopher Wren, Samuel Pepys, Ursula Southeil.

After the fire, a rumour began to circulate that the fire was part of a Catholic plot. A simple-minded French watchmaker named Robert "Lucky" Hubert, confessed to being an agent of the Pope and starting the fire in Westminster. He later changed his story to say that he had started it at the bakery in Pudding Lane. He was convicted, despite overwhelming evidence that he could not have started the fire, and was hanged at Tyburn.

Christopher Wren was put in charge of re-building the city after the fire. His original plans involved rebuilding the city in brick and stone to a grid plan with continental piazzas and avenues. But because many buildings had survived to basement level, legal disputes over ownership of land ended the grid plan idea. From 1667, Parliament raised funds for re-building London by taxing coal, and the city was eventually rebuilt to its existing street plan, but built instead out of brick and stone and with improved sanitation and access. Christopher Wren also re-built St Paul's Cathedral 11 years after the fire.

Lessons in fire safety were learned, and when the current Globe Theatre was opened in 1997, it was the first building in London with a thatched roof since The Fire.

The Monument to the Great Fire of London, known simply as The Monument, was designed by Wren and Robert Hooke. It is close to the site where the fire started², near the northern end of London Bridge. The corner of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane where the fire ended was known as Pye Corner, and is marked by a small gilded statue known as the Fat Boy or the Golden Boy of Pye Corner , supposedly a reference to the theory expounded by a non-conformist preacher who said "the calamity could not have been the sin of blasphemy for in that case it would have began at Billingsgate, nor lewdness for then Drury Lane would have been first on fire nor lying for then the flames would have reached the City from Westminster Hall. No, it was occasioned by the sin of gluttony for it began at Pudding Lane and ended at Pye Corner."

John Dryden commemorated the fire in his poem of 1667, Annus Mirabilis. Dryden worked, in his poem, to counteract paranoia about the causes of the fire and proposed that the fire was part of a year of miracles, rather than a year of disasters. The fact that Charles was already planning to rebuild a glorious city atop the ashes and the fact that there were so few fatalities were, to Dryden, signs of divine favor, rather than curse.

There had been much prophesy of a disaster befalling London in 1666, since in Arabic numerals it included the number of the Beast and in Roman numerals it was a declining-order list (MDCLXVI). Walter Gostelo wrote in 1658 "If fire make not ashes of the city, and thy bones also, conclude me a liar forever!…the decree is gone out, repent, or burn, as Soddom and Gomorrah!" It seemed to many, coming after a civil war and a plague, Revelation's third horseman.

This is an extract from the Diary of Samuel Pepys:

“By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down tonight by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish Street, by London Bridge. So I made myself ready presently, and walked to the Tower; and there got up upon one of the high places, and there I did see the houses at the end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side of the bridge!”

Footnotes

Farrinor's name is variously spelled Farriner, Farryner or Farynor
The Monument stands 61 metres (202 feet) tall, the height marking the monument's distance to the site of Thomas Farynor, the king's baker's shop in Pudding Lane, where the fire began.

de:Der große Brand von London eo:Granda Incendio de Londono nl:Grote brand van Londen pl:Pożar Londynu w roku 1666 uk:Велика пожежа (Лондон)

Great Fire of London

The Aftermath and Consequences

Further reading

Footnotes