The great fire of London 1666
*****************************

The Great Fire of London is one of the most well-known disasters in London's history. It began on 
2 September 1666 and lasted just under five days. One-third of London was destroyed and about 100,000 
people were made homeless.

Fire was a serious and frightening danger in the 17c urban environment, but the regulations concerning 
hazardous practices, such as inadequate chimneys and the storage of fuel, enforced by the local officers, 
reduced the risks. Fire-fighting equipment consisted chiefly of stocks of leather buckets and, from 
about 1640, fire-engines, which were widely praised. Writing in 1657, James Howell was confident that: 

		"There's no place ...better armed against the fury of the fire; 
		for besides the pitched Buckets that hang in Churches and Halls, 
		there are divers new Engines for that purpose" 

		(J. Howell, Londinopolis, 1657, 398). 

Water supplies had kept pace with massive population growth. From the 1580s wells and conduits were
supplemented by river water raised to street level by waterwheels, first built by Peter Morris and 
placed between some of the arches of London Bridge, and, by a scheme implemented by Sir Hugh Myddelton,
from a canal that brought water from Hertfordshire. But when a fire began the watchmen had to raise 
the alarm promptly, especially in dry and windy weather and at night. A swift response was essential, 
for once a blaze had taken a firm hold, it was always very difficult to control.....

The beginning
*************

The fire started at 1am on Sunday morning on 2 September in Thomas Farynor's bakery (he was the king's 
baker) on Pudding Lane. It may have been caused by a his maid failing to put out the ovens at the end 
of the night. The heat created by the ovens probably caused sparks to ignite the wooden home of Farynor. 
In her panic, the maid tried to climb out of the building but failed. She was one of the few victims 
recorded to have died in the fire. 

Once it started, the fire spread quickly. The city was basically made out of wood and the fire spread 
easily because London was very dry after a long, hot summer. The area around Pudding Lane was full of 
warehouses containing highly flammable things like timber, rope and oil that had been accumulated for 
the coming winter, and they burned readily. A very strong easterly wind blew the fire from house to 
house in the narrow streets. The fire leaped to the hay and feed piles on the yard of the Star Inn at 
Fish Street Hill, and spread to the Inn. The strong wind that blew that night sent sparks that next 
ignited the Church of St. Margaret, and then spread to Thames Street, with its riverside warehouses 
and wharves filled with food for the flames: hemp, oil, tallow, hay, timber, coal and spirits along 
with other combustibles. 

The citizen firefighting brigades had little success in containing the fire with their buckets of water 
from the river. By eight o'clock in the morning, the fire had spread halfway across London Bridge. 
The only thing that stopped the fire from spreading to Southwark, on the other side of the river, 
was the gap that had been caused by the fire of 1633. The initial response was sluggish because fewer 
people were up and about than on a weekday.

As the fire was spreading so quickly most Londoners concentrated on escaping rather than fighting 
the fire. They rescued as many of their belongings as they could carry and fled. Thomas Farynor and 
his family had to climb out of an upstairs window and onto their neighbour's roof to escape the fire 
in their bakery. 

An ineffective Mayor
********************

Sir Thomas Bludworth (or Bloodworth) was, at about the time of the fire starting, enjoying his 46th 
birthday celebrations. He was a merchant and politician and had only been appointed as Mayor in the 
previous year, 1665. Despite the evidence to the contrary, Thomas Bludworth was not concerned by what 
he was told. When Bludworth arrived at the scene he refused to allow any demolition to take place in 
order to create firebreaks. Possibly, this was due to fear of complaints from the owners of the 
buildings which would be destroyed that such actions were unnecessary, asking who would pay the 
compensation for them. 

According to Samuel Pepys' record of the events, he expressed a lack of concern that the fire would 
become dangerous, saying that:

		 "a woman might piss it out," 

before returning to his home and going to sleep until morning... 

Over the next three days, the fire destroyed more than 75 percent of the city. Bludworth appears to 
have been made a scapegoat for the failure to arrest the Fire, for until he had the King's authority 
he could not pull down houses without being made personally responsible for the cost of rebuilding 
them, and he was also faced with stiff resistance from the aldermen.

Escape
******

Many Londoners fled to the river and tried to load their goods onto boats to get away to safety. Other 
people rushed through the City gates and went to the fields outside London. They stayed there for many 
days, sheltering in tents and shacks. Some people were forced to live in this way for months and even 
years. Many gathered on nearby heaths such as Hampstead. Here they were safe but they also got a good 
view of the destruction of the fire.

Fighting the fire
*****************

There was no fire brigade in London in 1666 so Londoners themselves had to fight the fire, helped by 
local soldiers. They used buckets of water, water squirts and fire hooks. Equipment was stored in local 
churches. The best way to stop the fire was to pull down houses with hooks to make gaps or 'fire breaks'. 
This was difficult because the wind forced the fire across any gaps created. The mayor, Thomas Bludworth, 
complained, 'the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.' 

The City magistrates were of the generation that had fought in the Civil War, and could remember how 
Charles I's grab for absolute power had led to that national trauma. They were determined to thwart 
any similar tendencies of his son, and when the Great Fire threatened the City, they refused the offers 
Charles made of soldiers and other resources. Even in such an emergency, the idea of having the 
unpopular Royal troops ordered into the City was political dynamite. By the time Charles took over 
command from the ineffectual Lord Mayor, the fire was already out of control.

On the Sunday afternoon Charles II and James, duke of York, went by barge to assess the situation and 
on Monday, as the fire spread remorselessly, the king ordered the establishment of eight fire posts 
from which the firefighters' efforts would be directed, putting the duke in overall control. Both were 
praised for their efforts in encouraging the firefighters and John Dolben, dean of Westminster, 
supervised the men who saved the church of St Dunstan-in-the-East. 

Despite a few similar successes and the attempts to create firebreaks, because of the heat and smoke, 
the congestion of buildings, burning debris blown ahead of the flames, the quantities of fuel and hay, 
the bustle of people trying to save their possessions, the debris from collapsed buildings blocking 
the streets and alleys, the increasing weariness of those struggling to douse the flames, and the 
relentless wind, the fires could not be contained and continued to burn until the wind dropped late 
on Wednesday 5th.

The intensity of the inferno was so great by the time it reached St. Paul's Cathedral that the lead 
roof of the structure melted, and witnesses reported seeing lead flowing in the streets. The steel 
underpinnings of the wharves along the Thames melted in the heat, as did the chains of the city gates 
and the iron bars of Newgate gaol. 

Rioting
*******

Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. The fears of 
the homeless focused on the French and Dutch, England's enemies in the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War; 
these substantial immigrant groups became victims of lynchings and street violence. On Tuesday, the 
fire spread over most of the City, destroying St. Paul's Cathedral and leaping the River Fleet to 
threaten Charles II's court at Whitehall, while coordinated firefighting efforts were simultaneously 
mobilising. 

Firebreaks
**********

Fire Posts, each staffed by 130 men, had been set up around the City to co-ordinate the fight of the 
blaze. The battle to quench the fire is considered to have been won by two factors: the strong east 
winds died down, and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to create effective firebreaks to 
halt further spread eastward. This technique wasn't used until the third day of the fire (Tuesday 4th). 
On Tuesday night the wind dropped and the fire-fighters finally gained control. 

By dawn on Thursday the fire was out, leaving a smouldering wasteland where the heart of the city 
to the North of the Thames once stood.

Eye witness
***********

By Sunday morning it was clear that a major disaster was in the making, but the response was sluggish 
because fewer people were up and about than on a weekday. In the records is an account from William 
Taswell, a young schoolboy, who had seen :

		'the ignorant and deluded mob... venting forth their 
		rage against the Roman Catholics and Frenchmen' 

and his brother saw: 

		'a Frenchman almost dismembered'

Like most boys, young William had a taste for the gory. As he wandered towards the ruined cathedral 
after the blaze had burned itself out William describes:

		'the ground so hot as almost to scorch my shoes.' 

In the churchyard he finds the carcasses of dogs: 

		'stiff as a plank, the skins being tough like leather.'  

But most shockingly and pitifully of all he describes coming across the body of a woman curled behind 
the churchyard wall where she had tried to hide from the flames, 

		'every limb reduced to a coal'.

The Aftermath
*************

The Great Fire did not completely stop the Great Plague of 1665, although the one positive effect of 
the Fire was that the plague diminished greatly due to the mass death of the plague-carrying rats.

The damage caused by the Great Fire was immense. Over 430 acres of London were destroyed, including 
13,200 houses and 87 out of 109 churches. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old 
Roman City Wall. It threatened, but eventually did not reach, the aristocratic district of Westminster, 
Charles II's Palace of Whitehall, and most of the suburban slums. Some places still smoldered for 
months afterwards. Only 51 churches and about 9000 houses were rebuilt. St Paul's Cathedral was ruined, 
as was the Guildhall (the offices of the Lord Mayor) and 52 livery company halls (livery companies 
were organisations that looked after the different trades in London). 

Much of the wealth of the goldsmiths and merchants, such as Sir Thomas Vyner, Sir Richard Browne, 
and Edward Backwell, was in money and bills and was easily saved. It was the bulky goods, including 
oil, timber, and coal, that were lost, and when coal prices rose sharply those whose stock had escaped 
were condemned for profiteering, including Edmund Berry Godfrey, who, ironically, was also knighted for 
his efforts during the fire. The booksellers and printers, concentrated in St Paul's churchyard, suffered 
badly; stocks of books by Edmund Castell, Sir William Dugdale, John Goad, and Christopher Merret 
among others were burnt. 

A plausible estimate of the value of the buildings, trade, and household goods destroyed is almost 
£8 million (almost £900 million today). No other accidental fire in a city in western Europe has been 
so destructive. Even so, four-fifths of the metropolis escaped untouched.

Fewer than 10 people are recorded as dying in the Great Fire, although this reckoning has recently 
been challenged on the grounds that the deaths of poor and middle-class people were not recorded, 
while the heat of the fire may have cremated many victims leaving no recognisable remains...

Rebuilding
**********

The city and the cathedral looked very different afterwards in the early 1700s. Throughout 1667 people 
cleared rubble and surveyed the burnt area. Much time was spent planning new street layouts and drawing 
up new building regulations. By the end of the year, only 150 new houses had been built. It took nearly 
50 years to rebuild the burnt area of London. Sir Christopher Wren was soon commissioned to design and 
oversee the construction of nearly 50 churches, not least of them a new St. Paul's Cathedral, construction 
of which began in 1675 and not completed until 1711. 

The King also had Wren design a monument to the Great Fire, which stands still today at the site of 
the bakery which started it all, on a street now named Monument Street. It was not until 1831 that 
the inscription on the fire's commemorative Monument, blaming 'the treachery and malice of the Popish 
faction', was removed. An inferno caused by a forgetful baker, fuelled by a strong wind and indecisive 
leadership, was blamed on Catholics for over 150 years. 
 
Public buildings, like churches, were paid for with money from a new coal tax. The new regulations 
were designed to prevent such a disaster happening again. Houses now had to be faced in brick instead 
of wood. Some streets were widened and two new streets were created. Pavements and new sewers were 
laid, and London's quaysides were improved. The results were noticeable: '(London) is not only the 
finest, but the most healthy city in the world', said one proud Londoner.

The blame game
**************

An example of the urge to identify scapegoats for the fire is the arrest in Romford and the subsequent 
acceptance of the confession of a simple-minded French watchmaker, Robert Hubert, who claimed he was 
an agent of the Pope and had started the Great Fire in Westminster. He later changed his story to say 
that he had started the fire at the Farynor bakery in Pudding Lane (it is interesting to note that the 
group judging him contained three members of the Farynor family). Hubert was convicted, despite some 
misgivings about his fitness to plead, and hanged at Tyburn on 28 September 1666. After his death, it 
became apparent that he had not arrived in London until two days after the fire started. These 
allegations that Catholics had started the fire were exploited as powerful political propaganda by 
opponents of pro-Catholic Charles II's court, mostly during the Popish Plot and the exclusion crisis 
later in his reign.

Modern excavations
******************

In 1979 archaeologists excavated the remains of a burnt-out shop on Pudding Lane which was very close 
to the bakery where the fire started. In the cellar they found the charred remnants of 20 barrels of 
pitch (tar). Pitch burns very easily and would have helped to spread the fire. Among the burnt objects 
from the shop, the archaeologists found melted pieces of pottery which show that the temperature of 
the fire was as high as 1700 degrees Celsius.





sources:
Bell, Walter G. "The Great Fire of London in 1666"
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1971.)
Porter, Stephen. "The Great Fire of London"
(Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing 1996.)
www.museumoflondon.org.uk
www.oxforddnb.com
en.wikipedia.org
www.historylearningsite.co.uk
www.bbc.co.uk/history