Detail of painting from 1666 of the Great Fire of London by an unknown artist, depicting the fire as it would have appeared on the evening of Tuesday, 4 September from a boat in the vicinity of Tower Wharf. Events 476 - Romulus Augustus, last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed when Odoacer proclaims himself St Katharine Docks, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, were one of the commercial docks serving London, on the north side of the river Thames The Tower of London is on the right and London Bridge on the left, with St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance, surrounded by the tallest flames. Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London (and historically as The Tower) is a historic monument in central London London Bridge is a Bridge between the City of London and Southwark in London, England, over the River Thames.

The Great Fire of London, a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of London from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666, was one of the major events in the history of England. A firestorm is a Conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. Events 44 BC - Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion. Events 1590 - Alexander Farnese 's army forces Henry IV of France to raise the siege of Paris. England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland ^[1] The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall. For London as a whole see the main article London. The City of London is a geographically Roman Britain refers to those parts of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire between AD 43 and 410 London Wall was the Defensive wall built by the Romans around Londinium, their strategically important port town on the River Thames in England It threatened, but did not reach, the aristocratic district of Westminster (the modern West End), Charles II's Palace of Whitehall, and most of the suburban slums. Westminster is an area of Central London, within the City of Westminster. The West End of London is an area of Central London, England, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions businesses headquarters and the commercial Charles II (Charles Stuart 29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685 was the King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The Palace of Whitehall was the main residence of the English monarchs in London from 1530 until 1698 when all except Inigo Jones 's 1622 A slum, as defined by the United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security ^[2] It consumed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, St. Paul's Cathedral, and most of the buildings of the City authorities. It is estimated that it destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the City's ca. 80,000 inhabitants. ^[3] The death toll from the fire is unknown and is traditionally thought to have been small, as only a few verified deaths were recorded. This reasoning has recently been challenged on the grounds that the deaths of poor and middle-class people were not recorded anywhere, and that the heat of the fire may have cremated many victims, leaving no recognisable remains.

The fire started at the bakery of Thomas Farriner (or Farynor) on Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday, 2 September, and it spread rapidly around London. Pudding Lane is the street in London formerly containing Thomas Farriner's bakehouse where the Great Fire of London began in 1666. Events 44 BC - Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion. The use of the major firefighting technique of the time, the creation of firebreaks by means of demolition, was critically delayed due to the indecisiveness of the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth. Distinguish from a Firefight, which means a battle with firearms A firebreak (also called a fireroad, fire line or fuel break) is a gap in Vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of London is the legal title for the Mayor of (and head of the City of London Corporation. Sir Thomas Bloodworth (sometimes spelled Bludworth) (1620-1682 was Lord Mayor of London from October 1665 to October 1666 By the time large-scale demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned the bakery fire into a firestorm which defeated such measures. A firestorm is a Conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. 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. The Second Anglo-Dutch War was fought between England and the United Provinces from 4 March, 1665 until 31 July, 1667. Lynching is an Extrajudicial punishment meted out by a mob Lynching an enumerated Felony in some states in the United States, is defined by some 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. The River Fleet is the largest of London 's subterranean rivers It formerly flowed on the surface Whitehall is a road in Westminster in London, England. It is the main artery running north from Parliament Square, towards traditional 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. Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London (and historically as The Tower) is a historic monument in central London Gunpowder is a an explosive mixture of Sulfur, Charcoal and Potassium nitrate (also known as saltpetre/saltpeter that burns rapidly producing volumes A firebreak (also called a fireroad, fire line or fuel break) is a gap in Vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to

The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. Evacuation from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Despite numerous radical proposals, London was reconstructed on essentially the same street plan used before the fire. ^[4]

London in the 1660s

Central London in 1666, with the burnt area shown in pink

By the 1660s, London was by far the largest city in Britain, estimated at half a million inhabitants, which was more than the next fifty towns in England combined. London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. ^[5] Comparing London to the Baroque magnificence of Paris, John Evelyn called it a "wooden, northern, and inartificial congestion of Houses," and expressed alarm about the fire hazard posed by the wood and the congestion. Baroque art redirects here Please disambiguate such links to Baroque painting, Baroque sculpture, etc Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city John Evelyn ( 31 October 1620 – 27 February 1706) was an English writer gardener and diarist ^[6] By "inartificial", Evelyn meant unplanned and makeshift, the result of organic growth and unregulated urban sprawl. Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is the spreading of a city and its Suburbs over rural land at the fringe of an urban area A Roman settlement for four centuries, London had become progressively more overcrowded inside its defensive City wall. London Wall was the Defensive wall built by the Romans around Londinium, their strategically important port town on the River Thames in England It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into squalid extramural slums such as Shoreditch, Holborn, and Southwark and had reached to physically incorporate the independent city of Westminster. A slum, as defined by the United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney. Holborn (ˈhoʊbɚn or /ˈhoʊbɝːn/ "ho bun" is an area of Central London, England Southwark or The Borough is an area of south-east London in the London Borough of Southwark, situated 1 Westminster is an area of Central London, within the City of Westminster. ^[7]

By the late 17th century, the City proper—the area bounded by the City wall and the river Thames—was only one part of London, covering 700 acres (2. The Thames ( is a major River flowing through southern England. 8 km²),^[8] and home to about 80,000 people, or one sixth of London's inhabitants. Square Kilometre ( US spelling square kilometer) symbol km2, is a decimal multiple of the SI unit of The City was surrounded by a ring of inner suburbs, where most Londoners lived. The City was then as now the commercial heart of the capital, the largest market and busiest port in England, dominated by the trading and manufacturing classes. ^[9] The aristocracy shunned the City and lived either in the countryside beyond the slum suburbs, or further west in the exclusive Westminster district (the modern West End), the site of Charles II's court at Whitehall. Aristocracy is a form of Government, where rule is established through an internal struggle over who has the most status and influence over society and internal relations The West End of London is an area of Central London, England, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions businesses headquarters and the commercial Charles II (Charles Stuart 29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685 was the King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Wealthy people preferred to live at a convenient distance from the always traffic-jammed, polluted, unhealthy City, especially after it was hit by a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague in the "Plague Year" of 1665. Bubonic plague is the best-known manifestation of the bacterial disease plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis (formerly known as The Great Plague (1665-1666 was a massive outbreak of Disease in England that killed 75000 to 100000 people up to a fifth of London 's population

The relationship between the City and the Crown was very tense. During the Civil War, 1642–1651, the City of London had been a stronghold of Republicanism, and the wealthy and economically dynamic capital still had the potential to be a threat to Charles II, as had been demonstrated by several Republican uprisings in London in the early 1660s. The English Civil War (1642-1651 was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists. Republicanism is the Ideology of governing a nation as a Republic, with an emphasis on Liberty, Rule of law, Popular sovereignty 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. Absolute monarchy is a monarchical Form of government where the king and queen have absolute power over everything ^[10] They were determined to thwart any similar tendencies from 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.

Fire hazards in the City

Charles II. Charles II (Charles Stuart 29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685 was the King of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

The City was essentially medieval in its street plan, an overcrowded warren of narrow, winding, cobbled alleys. It had experienced several major fires before 1666, the most recent in 1632. In common with all old cities London has experienced numerous serious fires in the course of its history Building with wood and roofing with thatch had been prohibited for centuries, but these cheap materials continued to be used. ^[11] The only major stone-built area was the wealthy centre of the City, where the mansions of the merchants and brokers stood on spacious lots, surrounded by an inner ring of overcrowded poorer parishes whose every inch of building space was used to accommodate the rapidly growing population. A parish is a Local church; it is an administrative unit typically found in episcopal or presbyterian churches These parishes contained workplaces, many of which were fire hazards—foundries, smithies, glaziers—which were theoretically illegal in the City, but tolerated in practice. A foundry is a Factory which produces Metal Castings from either Ferrous or non-ferrous alloys A forge is the workplace of a smith or a Blacksmith. A forge is sometimes referred to as a smithy. A Glazier is a Construction professional that selects cuts installs replaces and removes Residential, commercial, and Artistic Glass The human habitations mixed in with these sources of heat, sparks, and pollution were crowded to bursting-point and designed with uniquely risky features. "Jetties" (projecting upper floors) were characteristic of the typical six- or seven-storey timbered London tenement houses. Jettying is a building technique used in Medieval timber frame buildings in which an upper floor projects beyond the dimensions of the floor below These buildings had a narrow footprint at ground level, but would maximise their use of a given land plot by "encroaching", as a contemporary observer put it, on the street with the gradually increasing size of their upper storeys. The fire hazard posed when the top jetties all but met across the narrow alleys was well perceived—"as it does facilitate a conflagration, so does it also hinder the remedy", wrote one observer^[12]—but "the covetousness of the citizens and connivancy [that is, the corruption] of Magistrates" worked in favour of jetties. A magistrate is a judicial officer In Common law systems a magistrate usually has limited authority to administer and enforce the Law. In 1661, Charles II issued a proclamation forbidding overhanging windows and jetties, but this was largely ignored by the local government. Charles' next, sharper, message in 1665 warned of the risk of fire from the narrowness of the streets and authorised both imprisonment of recalcitrant builders and demolition of dangerous buildings. It too had little impact.

The riverfront was a key area for the development of the Great Fire. The Thames offered water for the firefighting effort and hope of escape by boat, but, with stores and cellars of combustibles, the poorer districts along the riverfront presented the highest conflagration risk of any. All along the wharves, the rickety wooden tenements and tar paper shacks of the poor were shoehorned amongst "old paper buildings and the most combustible matter of Tarr, Pitch, Hemp, Rosen, and Flax which was all layd up thereabouts. Tar paper is a heavy-duty Paper used in Construction. Tar paper is made by impregnating paper with Tar, producing a Waterproof material useful Tar is a viscous black Liquid derived from the Destructive distillation of organic matter Pitch is the name for any of a number of highly viscous Liquids which appear Solid. This article is about the cultivation and uses of industrial hemp not its psychoactive cousin Cannabis (drug. Resin, not to be confused with Rosin, is a Hydrocarbon Secretion of many Plants particularly coniferous trees. Flax (also known as common flax or linseed) (binomial name Linum usitatissimum) is a member of the genus Linum "^[13] London was also full of black powder, especially along the riverfront. Gunpowder is a an explosive mixture of Sulfur, Charcoal and Potassium nitrate (also known as saltpetre/saltpeter that burns rapidly producing volumes Much of it was left in the homes of private citizens from the days of the English Civil War, as the former members of Cromwell's New Model Army still retained their muskets and the powder with which to load them. Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 Old Style &ndash 3 September 1658 Old Style) was an English military and political leader best known The New Model Army was formed in 1645 by the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War. A musket is a muzzle -loaded Smoothbore Long gun, which is intended to be fired from the shoulder Five to six hundred tons of powder were stored in the Tower of London at the north end of London Bridge. London Bridge is a Bridge between the City of London and Southwark in London, England, over the River Thames. The ship chandlers along the wharves also held large stocks, stored in wooden barrels. A ship chandler is a Retail dealer in special supplies or equipment for ships

London Bridge, the only physical connection between the City and the south side of the river Thames, was itself covered with houses and had been noted as a deathtrap in the fire of 1632. By Sunday's dawn these houses were burning, and Samuel Pepys, observing the conflagration from the Tower of London, recorded great concern for friends living on the bridge. Samuel Pepys, FRS (23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703 was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament, who is now most famous for ^[14] There were fears that the flames would cross London Bridge to threaten the borough of Southwark on the south bank, but this danger was averted by an open space between buildings on the bridge which acted as a firebreak. A borough is an Administrative division of various countries In principle the term borough designates a self-governing Township although in practice Southwark or The Borough is an area of south-east London in the London Borough of Southwark, situated 1 A firebreak (also called a fireroad, fire line or fuel break) is a gap in Vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to ^[15]

The 18-foot (5. 5 m) high Roman wall enclosing the City put the fleeing homeless at risk of being shut into the inferno. Once the riverfront was on fire and the escape route by boat cut off, the only way out was through the eight gates in the wall. During the first couple of days, few people had any notion of fleeing the burning City altogether: they would remove what they could carry of belongings to the nearest "safe house", in many cases the parish church, or the precincts of St. Paul's Cathedral, only to have to move again hours later. Some moved their belongings and themselves "four and five times" in a single day. ^[16] The perception of a need to get beyond the walls only took root late on the Monday, and then there were near-panic scenes at the narrow gates as distraught refugees tried to get out with their bundles, carts, horses, and wagons.

The crucial factor in frustrating firefighting efforts was the narrowness of the streets. Even under normal circumstances, the mix of carts, wagons, and pedestrians in the undersized alleys was subject to frequent traffic jams and gridlock. During the fire, the passages were additionally blocked by refugees camping in them amongst their rescued belongings, or escaping outwards, away from the centre of destruction, as demolition teams and fire engine crews struggled in vain to move in towards it.

Seventeenth-century firefighting

Firehooks used to fight a fire at Tiverton in Devon, England, 1612. Tiverton is an English town in the County of Devon. The administrative centre for the Mid Devon district its population is about 18500 Devon is a large county in the South West of England. The county is also referred to as Devonshire, but that is an entirely unofficial name

Advertisement for a comparatively small and manoeuvrable seventeenth-century fire engine on wheels: "These Engins, (which are the best) to quinch great Fire; are made by John Keeling in Black Fryers (after many years' Experience). A fire apparatus, fire engine, fire truck, or fire appliance is a vehicle designed to assist in fighting Fires by transporting Firefighters Blackfriars is an area of central London, which lies in the south-west corner of the City of London. "

Fires were common in the crowded wood-built city with its open fireplaces, candles, ovens, and stores of combustibles. There was no police or fire department to call, but London's local militia, known as the Trained Bands or Train-band, was at least in principle available for general emergencies, and watching for fire was one of the jobs of the watch, a thousand watchmen or "bellmen" who patrolled the streets at night. The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary Citizens to provide defense emergency law enforcement or Paramilitary service Trainbands were companies of Militia in England or The Americas, first organized in the 16th century and dissolved in the 18th Watchmen were groups of men usually authorised by a state government or society to deter criminal activity and provide law enforcement ^[17] Self-reliant community procedures for dealing with fires were in place, and were usually effective. Public-spirited citizens would be alerted to a dangerous house fire by muffled peals on the church bells, and would congregate hastily to use the available techniques, which relied on demolition and water. By law, the tower of every parish church had to hold equipment for these efforts: long ladders, leather buckets, axes, and "firehooks" for pulling down buildings (see illustration right). A parish is a Local church; it is an administrative unit typically found in episcopal or presbyterian churches ^[18] Sometimes taller buildings were levelled to the ground quickly and effectively by means of controlled gunpowder explosions. This drastic method for creating firebreaks was increasingly used towards the end of the Great Fire, and modern historians believe it was what finally won the struggle. ^[19]

Demolishing the houses downwind of a dangerous fire by means of firehooks or explosives was often an effective way of containing the destruction. This time, however, demolition was fatally delayed for hours by the Lord Mayor's lack of leadership and failure to give the necessary orders. The Lord Mayor is the title of the Mayor of a major city with special recognition ^[20] By the time orders came directly from the King to "spare no houses", the fire had devoured many more houses, and the demolition workers could no longer get through the crowded streets.

The use of water to extinguish the fire was also frustrated. In principle, water was available from a system of elm pipes which supplied 30,000 houses via a high water tower at Cornhill, filled from the river at high tide, and also via a reservoir of Hertfordshire spring water in Islington. Elms are Deciduous and Semi-deciduous Trees comprising the genus Ulmus, family Ulmaceae, found A water tower, watershed, or elevated water tower is a large elevated water storage container Cornhill is a ward, and one of the principal streets of the City of London, the historic nucleus of modern London. Islington is the central district of the London Borough of Islington. ^[21] It was often possible to open a pipe near a burning building and connect it to a hose to play on a fire, or fill buckets. Additionally, Pudding Lane was close to the river itself. Theoretically, all the lanes up to the bakery and adjoining buildings from the river should have been manned with double rows of firefighters passing full buckets up to the fire and empty buckets back down to the river. This did not happen, or at least was no longer happening by the time Pepys viewed the fire from the river at mid-morning on the Sunday. Pepys comments in his diary on how nobody was trying to put it out, but instead fleeing from it in fear, hurrying "to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire. " The flames crept towards the riverfront with little interference from the overwhelmed community and soon torched the flammable warehouses along the wharves. The resulting conflagration not only cut off the firefighters from the immediate water supply of the river, but also set alight the water wheels under London Bridge which pumped water to the Cornhill water tower; the direct access to the river and the supply of piped water failed together. A water wheel is a means of extracting power from the flow (or fall of water otherwise known as Hydropower.

London possessed advanced fire-fighting technology in the form of fire engines, which had been used in earlier large-scale fires. A fire apparatus, fire engine, fire truck, or fire appliance is a vehicle designed to assist in fighting Fires by transporting Firefighters However, unlike the useful firehooks, these large pumps had rarely proved flexible or functional enough to make much difference. Only some of them had wheels, others were mounted on wheelless sleds. ^[22] They had to be brought a long way, tended to arrive too late, and, with spouts but no delivery hoses, had limited reach. ^[23] On this occasion an unknown number of fire engines were either wheeled or dragged through the streets, some from across the City. The piped water that they were designed for had already failed, but parts of the river bank could still be reached. As gangs of men tried desperately to manoeuvre the engines right up to the river to fill their reservoirs, several of the engines toppled into the Thames. The heat from the flames was by then too great for the remaining engines to get within a useful distance; they could not even get into Pudding Lane.

Development of the fire

The personal experiences of many Londoners during the fire are glimpsed in letters and memoirs. The two most famous diarists of the Restoration, Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and John Evelyn (1620–1706), recorded the events and their own reactions day by day, and made great efforts to keep themselves informed of what was happening all over the City and beyond. The English Restoration, or simply The Restoration began in 1660 when the English monarchy, Scottish monarchy and Irish monarchy were restored Samuel Pepys, FRS (23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703 was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament, who is now most famous for John Evelyn ( 31 October 1620 – 27 February 1706) was an English writer gardener and diarist For example, they both travelled out to the Moorfields park area north of the City on the Wednesday—the fourth day—to view the mighty encampment of distressed refugees there, which shocked them. In London, the Moorfields were one of the last pieces of open land in the City of London, near the Moorgate. Their diaries are the most important sources for all modern retellings of the disaster. The most recent books on the fire, by Tinniswood (2003) and Hanson (2001), also rely on the brief memoirs of William Taswell (1651–82), who was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy at Westminster School in 1666. for other uses see Memoir (disambiguation As a literary Genre, a memoir (from the French: mémoire The Royal College of St Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain 's leading boys' Independent schools with

After two rainy summers in 1664 and 1665, London had lain under an exceptional drought since November 1665, and the wooden buildings were tinder-dry after the long hot summer of 1666. A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply The bakery fire in Pudding Lane spread at first due west, fanned by an eastern gale. A gale is a very strong Wind. There are conflicting definitions of how strong

Sunday

Approximate damage by the evening of Sunday, 2 September. Events 44 BC - Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion. ^[24]

"It made me weep to see it. " Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) painted by John Hayls in 1666, the year of the Great Fire. Samuel Pepys, FRS (23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703 was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament, who is now most famous for John Hayls (1600 - 1679 was an English Baroque era painter He is mentioned in the diary of Samuel Pepys where he is referred to as "Hales"

A fire broke out at Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane a little after midnight on Sunday, 2 September. Events 44 BC - Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion. The family was trapped upstairs, but managed to climb from an upstairs window to the house next door, except for a maidservant who was too frightened to try, and became the first victim. ^[25] The neighbours tried to help douse the fire; after an hour the parish constables arrived and judged that the adjoining houses had better be demolished to prevent further spread. Parish Constable was the term used to determine a Law enforcement officer, usually unpaid and part-time serving a parish. The householders protested, and the Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth, who alone had the authority to override their wishes, was summoned. The Lord Mayor is the title of the Mayor of a major city with special recognition Sir Thomas Bloodworth (sometimes spelled Bludworth) (1620-1682 was Lord Mayor of London from October 1665 to October 1666 When Bloodworth arrived, the flames were consuming the adjoining houses and creeping towards the paper warehouses and flammable stores on the riverfront. The more experienced firefighters were clamoring for demolition, but Bloodworth refused, on the argument that most premises were rented and the owners could not be found. Bloodworth is generally thought to have been appointed to the office of Lord Mayor as a yes man, rather than for any of the needful capabilities for the job; he panicked when faced with a sudden emergency. personal assistantAn assistant is a Person or electronic tool who or that assists another person accomplish his or her goals ^[26] Pressed, he made the often-quoted remark "Pish! A woman could piss it out", and left. After the City had been destroyed, Samuel Pepys, looking back on the events, wrote in his diary on 7 September 1666: "People do all the world over cry out of the simplicity [the stupidity] of my Lord Mayor in general; and more particularly in this business of the fire, laying it all upon him. Events 1251 BC - A Solar eclipse on this date might mark the birth of legendary Heracles at Thebes Greece. "

Around 7 a. m. on Sunday morning, Pepys, who was a significant official in the Navy Office, climbed the Tower of London to get an aerial view of the fire, and recorded in his diary that the eastern gale had turned it into a conflagration. It had burned down several churches and, he estimated, 300 houses, and reached the riverfront. The houses on London Bridge were burning. Taking a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range, Pepys describes a "lamentable" fire, "everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; 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 water-side to another. For other uses see Lighter (disambiguation. A lighter is a type of flat-bottomed Barge used to transfer goods to and from moored " Pepys continued westward on the river to the court at Whitehall, "where people come about me, and did give them an account dismayed them all, and word was carried in to the King. Whitehall is a road in Westminster in London, England. It is the main artery running north from Parliament Square, towards traditional So I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of Yorke 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, but to pull down before the fire every way. " Charles' brother James, Duke of York, offered the use of the Royal Life Guards to help fight the fire. James II of England and Ireland James VII of Scotland (14 October 1633 &ndash 16 September 1701 was King of England, King of Scots, Later that same year James The Life Guards (LG is the senior Regiment of the British Army. ^[27]

A mile west of Pudding Lane, by Westminster Stairs, young William Taswell, a schoolboy who had bolted from the early morning service in Westminster Abbey, saw some refugees arrive in for-hire lighter boats, unclothed and covered only with blankets. The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, which is almost always referred to by its original name of Westminster Abbey, is a large mainly Gothic church ^[28] The services of the lightermen had suddenly become extremely expensive, and only the luckiest refugees secured a place in a boat.

The fire spread quickly in the high wind. By mid-morning on Sunday, people abandoned attempts at extinguishing the fire and fled; their moving human mass and their bundles and carts made the lanes impassable for firefighters and carriages. Pepys took a coach back into the city from Whitehall, but only reached St. Paul's Cathedral before he had to get out and walk. Handcarts with goods and pedestrians were still on the move, away from the fire, heavily weighed down. The parish churches not directly threatened were filling up with furniture and valuables, which would soon have to be moved further afield. Pepys found Mayor Bloodworth trying to coordinate the firefighting efforts and near collapse, "like a fainting woman", crying out plaintively in response to the King's message that he was pulling down houses. "But the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it. " Holding on to his civic dignity, he refused James' offer of soldiers and then went home to bed. ^[29] Charles sailed down from Whitehall in the Royal barge to inspect the scene. He found that houses still were not being pulled down in spite of Bloodworth's assurances to Pepys, and daringly overrode the authority of Bloodworth to order wholesale demolitions west of the fire zone. ^[30] The delay rendered these measures largely futile, as the fire was already out of control.

By Sunday afternoon, 18 hours after the alarm was raised in Pudding Lane, the fire had become a raging firestorm which created its own weather. A firestorm is a Conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system A tremendous uprush of hot air above the flames was driven by the chimney effect wherever constrictions such as jettied buildings narrowed the air current and left a vacuum at ground level. Stack effect is the movement of air into and out of buildings Chimneys, Flue gas stacks, or other containers and is driven by Buoyancy. This vacuum means "absence of matter" or "an empty area or space" for the cleaning appliance see Vacuum cleaner. The resulting strong inward winds did not tend to put the fire out, as might be thought;^[31] instead, they added fresh oxygen to the flames, and the turbulence created by the uprush made the wind veer erratically both north and south of the main, easterly, direction of the gale which was still blowing. Oxygen (from the Greek roots ὀξύς (oxys (acid literally "sharp" from the taste of acids and -γενής (-genēs (producer literally begetteris the In Fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is a fluid regime characterized by chaotic Stochastic property changes

In the early evening, with his wife and some friends, Pepys went again on the river "and to the fire up and down, it still encreasing. " They ordered the boatman to go "so near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one's face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops. " When the "firedrops" became unbearable, the party went on to an alehouse on the south bank and stayed there till darkness came and they could see the fire on London Bridge and across the river, "as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. "

Monday

Approximate damage by the evening of Monday, 3 September. Events 36 BC - In the Battle of Naulochus, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Admiral of Octavian, defeats Sextus Pompeius

John Evelyn (1620–1706) in 1651. John Evelyn ( 31 October 1620 – 27 February 1706) was an English writer gardener and diarist

By dawn on Monday, 3 September, the fire was principally expanding north and west, the turbulence of the firestorm pushing the flames both more to the south and more to the north than the day before. Events 36 BC - In the Battle of Naulochus, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Admiral of Octavian, defeats Sextus Pompeius ^[32] The push to the south was in the main halted by the river itself, but had torched the houses on London Bridge, and was threatening to cross the bridge and endanger the borough of Southwark on the south riverbank. Southwark or The Borough is an area of south-east London in the London Borough of Southwark, situated 1 Southwark was preserved by a pre-existent firebreak on the bridge, a long gap between the buildings which had saved the south side of the Thames in the fire of 1632 and now did so again. ^[33] The corresponding push to the north drove the flames into the financial heart of the City. The houses of the bankers on Lombard Street began to burn on Monday afternoon, prompting a rush to get their stacks of gold coins, so crucial to the wealth of the city and the nation, to safety before they melted away. Lombard Street is a street in the City of London. It runs north-west from the corner of the Bank of England, where it meets a major intersection including Several observers emphasise the despair and helplessness which seemed to seize the Londoners on this second day, and the lack of efforts to save the wealthy, fashionable districts which were now menaced by the flames, such as the Royal Exchange—combined bourse and shopping mall—and the opulent consumer goods shops in Cheapside. A stock exchange, share market or bourse is a Corporation or Mutual organization which provides "trading" facilities for Stock Cheapside is a street in Cheap ward of the City of London that links Newgate Street with the junction of Queen Victoria Street Cornhill The Royal Exchange caught fire in the late afternoon, and was a smoking shell within a few hours. John Evelyn, courtier and diarist, wrote:

Evelyn lived four miles (6 km) outside the City, in Deptford, and so did not see the early stages of the disaster. Deptford is an area on the south bank of the River Thames in south-east London. On Monday, joining many other upper-class people, he went by coach to Southwark to watch the view that Pepys had seen the day before, of the burning City across the river. The conflagration was much larger now: "the whole City in dreadful flames near the water-side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames-street, and upwards towards Cheapside, down to the Three Cranes, were now consumed. "^[35] In the evening, Evelyn reported that the river was covered with barges and boats making their escape piled with goods. He observed a great exodus of carts and pedestrians through the bottleneck City gates, making for the open fields to the north and east, "which for many miles were strewed with movables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle!"

The London Gazette for September 3–September 10, with an account of the Great Fire. Events 36 BC - In the Battle of Naulochus, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Admiral of Octavian, defeats Sextus Pompeius Events 506 - The Bishops of Visigothic Gaul meet in the Council of Agde. Click on the image to enlarge and read.

Suspicion soon arose in the threatened city that the fire was no accident. The swirling winds carried sparks and burning flakes long distances to lodge on thatched roofs and in wooden gutters, causing seemingly unrelated house fires to break out far from their source and giving rise to rumours that fresh fires were being set on purpose. A rain gutter (also known as eaves trough, guttering or simply as a gutter) is a narrow channel or trough forming the component of a Roof system Foreigners were immediately suspect due to the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War. The Second Anglo-Dutch War was fought between England and the United Provinces from 4 March, 1665 until 31 July, 1667. As fear and suspicion hardened into certainty on the Monday, reports circulated of imminent invasion, and of foreign undercover agents seen casting "fireballs" into houses, or caught with hand grenades or matches. An invasion is a military offensive consisting of all or large parts of the Armed forces of one geopolitical entity aggressively entering territory ^[36] There was a wave of street violence. ^[37] William Taswell saw a mob loot the shop of a French painter and level it to the ground, and watched in horror as a blacksmith walked up to a Frenchman in the street and hit him over the head with an iron bar. The fears of terrorism received an extra boost from the disruption of communications and news as vital facilities were devoured by the fire. The General Letter Office in Threadneedle Street, through which post for the entire country passed, burned down early on Monday morning. Threadneedle Street is a road in the City of London, leading from an intersection with Poultry Cornhill, King William Street and Lombard Street The London Gazette just managed to put out its Monday issue before the printer's premises went up in flames (this issue contained mainly society gossip, with a small note about a fire that had broken out on Sunday morning and "which continues still with great violence"). The London Gazette is one of the official journals of record of the British government, and the most important among such official journals in the UK in which certain The whole nation depended on these communications, and the void they left filled up with rumours. There were also religious alarms of renewed Gunpowder Plots. The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 or the Powder Treason, as it was known at the time was a failed Assassination attempt by a group of provincial English As suspicions rose to panic and collective paranoia on the Monday, both the Trained Bands and the Coldstream Guards focused less on firefighting and more on rounding up foreigners, Catholics, and any odd-looking people, arresting them, rescuing them from mobs, or both together.

The inhabitants, especially the upper class, were growing desperate to remove their belongings from the City. This provided a source of income for the able-bodied poor, who hired out as porters (sometimes simply making off with the goods), and especially for the owners of carts and boats. Hiring a cart had cost a couple of shillings on the Saturday before the fire; on the Monday it rose to as much as forty pounds, a small fortune (equivalent to over £4000 in 2005). The shilling is a unit of Currency used in current and former Commonwealth countries and was continued to be used in countries that left the commonwealth ^[38] Seemingly every cart and boat owner within reach of London made their way towards the City to share in these opportunities, the carts jostling at the narrow gates with the panicked inhabitants trying to get out. The chaos at the gates was such that the magistrates ordered the gates shut on Monday afternoon, in the hope of turning the inhabitants' attention from safeguarding their own possessions to the fighting of the fire: "that, no hopes of saving any things left, they might have more desperately endeavoured the quenching of the fire. "^[39] This headlong and unsuccessful measure was rescinded the next day.

Even as order in the streets broke down, especially at the gates, and the fire raged unchecked, Monday marked the beginning of organised action. Bloodworth, who as Lord Mayor was responsible for coordinating the fire-fighting, had apparently left the City; his name is not mentioned in any contemporary accounts of the Monday events. ^[40] In this state of emergency, Charles again overrode the City authorities and put his brother James, Duke of York, in charge of operations. James II of England and Ireland James VII of Scotland (14 October 1633 &ndash 16 September 1701 was King of England, King of Scots, Later that same year James James set up command posts round the perimeter of the fire, press-ganging any men of the lower classes found in the streets into teams of well-paid and well-fed firefighters. Impressment (colloquially " the Press " or " press-ganging " is the act of conscripting people to serve in the military or navy usually Three courtiers were put in charge of each post, with authority from Charles himself to order demolitions. This visible gesture of solidarity from the Crown was intended to cut through the citizens' misgivings about being held financially responsible for pulling down houses. James and his life guards rode up and down the streets all Monday, rescuing foreigners from the mob and attempting to keep order. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of the people with his continual and indefatigable pains day and night in helping to quench the Fire", wrote a witness in a letter on September 8. Events 70 - Roman forces under Titus sack Jerusalem. 1264 - The Statute of Kalisz ^[41]

On the Monday evening, hopes that the massive stone walls of Baynard's Castle, Blackfriars, the western counterpart of the Tower of London, would stay the course of the flames were dashed and this historic royal palace was completely consumed, burning all night. Baynard's Castle in London was at various times a Castle, house and Palace. Blackfriars is an area of central London, which lies in the south-west corner of the City of London. Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London (and historically as The Tower) is a historic monument in central London ^[42]

Tuesday

Approximate damage by the evening of Tuesday, 4 September. Events 476 - Romulus Augustus, last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed when Odoacer proclaims himself The fire did not spread significantly on Wednesday, 5 September. Events 1590 - Alexander Farnese 's army forces Henry IV of France to raise the siege of Paris.

St. Paul's Cathedral in flames. Oil painting by anonymous artist, ca. 1670.

Tuesday, 4 September, was the day of greatest destruction. Events 476 - Romulus Augustus, last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed when Odoacer proclaims himself ^[43] The Duke of York's command post at Temple Bar, at the conjunction of The Strand and Fleet Street, was supposed to stop the fire's westward advance towards the Palace of Whitehall itself. Temple Bar is the barrier (real or imaginary marking the westernmost extent of the City of London on the road to Westminster, where Fleet Street (extending The Strand is a street in the City of Westminster, London, England. Fleet Street is a street in London, England named after the River Fleet. Making a stand with his firefighters from the Fleet Bridge and down to the Thames, James hoped that the River Fleet would form a natural firebreak. The River Fleet is the largest of London 's subterranean rivers It formerly flowed on the surface However, early on Tuesday morning, the flames jumped over the Fleet, driven by the unabated easterly gale, and outflanked them, forcing them to run for it. There was consternation at the palace as the fire continued implacably westward: "Oh, the confusion there was then at that court!" wrote Evelyn.

Working to a plan at last, James' firefighters had also created a large firebreak to the north of the conflagration. It contained the fire until late afternoon, when the flames leaped across and began to destroy the wide, affluent luxury shopping street of Cheapside. Cheapside is a street in Cheap ward of the City of London that links Newgate Street with the junction of Queen Victoria Street Cornhill

Everybody had thought St. Paul's Cathedral an absolute refuge, with its thick stone walls and natural firebreak in the form of a wide, empty surrounding plaza. It had been crammed full of rescued goods and its crypt filled with the tightly packed stocks of the printers and booksellers in adjoining Paternoster Row. In terms of European architecture a crypt (from the Latin crypta and the Greek κρυπτη, kryptē) is a stone chamber or Paternoster Square is an urban development owned by the Mitsubishi Estate Co However, in an enormous stroke of bad luck the building was covered in wooden scaffolding, awaiting restoration by Christopher Wren. Sir Christopher Wren ( 20 October 1632 &ndash 25 February 1723) was a 17th century English Designer, Astronomer The scaffolding caught fire on Tuesday night. Leaving school, young William Taswell stood on Westminster Stairs a mile away and watched as the flames crept round the cathedral and the burning scaffolding ignited the timbered roof beams. Within half an hour, the lead roof was melting, and the books and papers in the crypt caught with a roar. Characteristics Lead has a dull luster and is a dense, Ductile, very soft highly "The stones of Paul's flew like grenados, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them", reported Evelyn in his diary. The cathedral was quickly a ruin.

During the day, the flames began to move due east from the neighbourhood of Pudding Lane, straight against the prevailing east wind towards Pepys' home on Seething Lane and the Tower of London with its gunpowder stores. After waiting all day for requested help from James' official firefighters, who were busy in the west, the garrison at the Tower took matters into their own hands and created firebreaks by blowing up houses in the vicinity on a large scale, halting the advance of the fire.

Wednesday

James, Duke of York, later James II. James II of England and Ireland James VII of Scotland (14 October 1633 &ndash 16 September 1701 was King of England, King of Scots, Later that same year James

The wind dropped on Tuesday evening, allowing the firebreaks created by the garrison to finally begin to take effect on Wednesday, 5 September. Events 1590 - Alexander Farnese 's army forces Henry IV of France to raise the siege of Paris. ^[44] Pepys walked all over the smouldering city, getting his feet hot, and climbed the steeple of Barking Church, from which he viewed the destroyed City, "the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw. All Hallows-by-the-Tower, also previously dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, is an ancient Anglican church located in Byward Street in the City " There were many individual fires still burning themselves out, but the Great Fire was over. Pepys visited Moorfields, a large public park immediately north of the City, and saw a great encampment of homeless refugees, "poor wretches carrying their good there, and every body keeping his goods together by themselves", and noted that the price of bread in the environs of the park had doubled. In London, the Moorfields were one of the last pieces of open land in the City of London, near the Moorgate. Evelyn also went out to Moorfields, which was turning into the main point of assembly for the homeless, and was horrified at the numbers of distressed people filling it, some under tents, others in makeshift shacks: "Many [were] without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board. . . reduced to extremest misery and poverty. "^[45] Evelyn was impressed by the pride of these distressed Londoners, "tho' ready to perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one pennie for relief. "

Fears of foreign terrorists and of a French and Dutch invasion were as high as ever among the traumatised fire victims, and on Wednesday night there was an outbreak of general panic at the encampments at Parliament Hill, Moorfields and Islington. Parliament Hill is an open area of land in north-west London on the south side of Hampstead Heath, both areas administered by the City of London Corporation Islington is the central district of the London Borough of Islington. A light in the sky over Fleet Street started a story that 50,000 French and Dutch immigrants, widely rumoured to have started the fire, had risen and were marching towards Moorfields to finish what the fire had begun: to cut the men's throats, rape the women, and steal their few possessions. Surging into the streets, the frightened mob fell on any foreigners they happened to encounter, and were, according to Evelyn, only "with infinite pains and great difficulty" appeased and pushed back into the fields by the Trained Bands, troops of Life Guards, and members of the court. The mood was now so volatile that Charles feared a full-scale London rebellion against the monarchy. Food production and distribution had been disrupted to the point of non-existence, and Charles announced that supplies of bread would be brought into the City every day, and safe markets set up round the perimeter. These markets were for buying and selling; there was no question of distributing emergency aid.

Deaths and destruction

The LONDONERS Lamentation, a broadside ballad published in 1666 giving an account of the fire, and of the limits of its destruction. Printed lyrics of popular songs were extremely popular from the 16th century until the early 20th century Click on the image to enlarge and read.

Only a few deaths from the fire are officially recorded, and actual deaths are also traditionally supposed to have been few. Porter gives the figure as eight^[46] and Tinniswood as "in single figures", although he adds that some deaths must have gone unrecorded and that, besides direct deaths from burning and smoke inhalation, refugees also perished in the impromptu camps. Smoke inhalation is the primary cause of Death in victims of indoor Fires Smoke inhalation injury refers to injury due to inhalation or exposure to hot gaseous ^[47] Hanson takes issue with the whole notion that there were only a few deaths, enumerating known deaths from hunger and exposure among survivors of the holocaust, "huddled in shacks or living among the ruins that had once been their homes" in the cold winter that followed, including, for instance, the dramatist James Shirley and his wife. James Shirley (or Sherley) (September 1596 &ndash October 1666 was an English Dramatist. Hanson also maintains that "it stretches credulity to believe that the only papists or foreigners being beaten to death or lynched were the ones rescued by the Duke of York", that official figures say very little about the fate of the undocumented poor, and that the heat at the heart of the firestorms, far higher than the heat of an ordinary house fire, was sufficient to fully consume bodies, or leave only a few skull fragments. Papist is a term usually disparaging or an Anti-Catholic slur referring to a member of the Catholic Church. The fire, fed not merely by wood, fabrics, and thatch, but also by the oil, pitch, coal, tallow, fats, sugar, alcohol, turpentine, and gunpowder stored in the riverside district, melted the imported steel lying along the wharves (melting point between 1,250 °C (2,300 F) and 1,480 °C (2,700 F)) and the great iron chains and locks on the City gates (melting point between 1,100 °C (2,000 F) and 1,650 °C (3000 F)). Steel is an Alloy consisting mostly of Iron, with a Carbon content between 0 The melting point of a solid is the temperature range at which it changes state from solid to Liquid. Iron (ˈаɪɚn is a Chemical element with the symbol Fe (ferrum and Atomic number 26 Nor would anonymous bone fragments have been of much interest to the hungry people sifting through the tens of thousands of tons of rubble and debris after the fire, looking for valuables, or to the workmen clearing away the rubble later for the rebuilding. Appealing to common sense and "the experience of every other major urban fire down the centuries", Hanson emphasises that the fire attacked the rotting tenements of the poor with furious speed, surely trapping at the very least "the old, the very young, the halt and the lame" and burying the dust and ashes of their bones under the rubble of cellars; making for a death toll not of four or eight, but of "several hundred and quite possibly several thousand. "^[48]

The material destruction has been computed at 13,500 houses, 87 parish churches, 44 Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St. The Royal Exchange in the City of London was founded in 1565 by Sir Thomas Gresham to act as a centre of Commerce for the city A Custom House or Customs House was a building housing the offices for the government officials who processed the paperwork for the import and export of goods into and out Paul's Cathedral, the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons, the General Letter Office, and the three western city gates, Ludgate, Newgate, and Aldersgate. Bridewell Palace, London, originally a residence of Henry VIII, later became a poorhouse and prison Ludgate was the westernmost gate in London Wall. The name survives in Ludgate Hill, an eastward continuation of Fleet Street, and Ludgate Circus Newgate was a Gate in the west of London Wall round the City of London. Aldersgate was a gate in the London Wall in the City of London, which has given its name to a ward and Aldersgate Street a road leading north from the ^[49] The monetary value of the loss, first estimated at £100,000,000 in the currency of the time, was later reduced to an uncertain £10,000,000^[50] (over £1,000,000,000 in 2005 pounds). ^[51] Evelyn believed that he saw as many as "200,000 people of all ranks and stations dispersed, and lying along their heaps of what they could save" in the fields towards Islington and Highgate. Islington is the central district of the London Borough of Islington. Highgate is a suburb of North London on the north-eastern corner of Hampstead Heath. ^[52]

Aftermath

An example of the urge to identify scapegoats for the fire is the 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. Robert Hubert (c 1640 - 28 September, 1666) was a watchmaker from Rouen, France famous for his False confession of starting the Great History See also History of the Papacy Catholics recognize the Pope as a successor to Saint Peter, who Jesus named as the "shepherd" and ^[53] He later changed his story to say that he had started the fire at the bakery in Pudding Lane. Hubert was convicted, despite some misgivings about his fitness to plead, and hanged at Tyburn on September 28, 1666. In the law of England and Wales fitness to plead is the capacity of a defendant in criminal proceedings to comprehend the course of those proceedings History The village was one of two manors of the Parish of St Marylebone, which was itself named after the stream St Marylebone being Events 48 BC - Pompey the Great is assassinated on orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt after landing in Egypt. After his death, it became apparent that he had not arrived in London until two days after the fire started. ^[54] 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. The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy concocted by Titus Oates which gripped England in Anti-Catholic hysteria from 1678 until 1681. ^[55]

In the chaos and unrest after the fire, Charles II feared another London rebellion. He encouraged the homeless to move away from London and settle elsewhere, immediately issuing a proclamation that "all Cities and Towns whatsoever shall without any contradiction receive the said distressed persons and permit them the free exercise of their manual trades. " A special Fire Court was set up to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. The Court was in session from February 1667 to September 1672. Cases were heard and a verdict usually given within a day, and without the Fire Court, lengthy legal wrangles would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was so necessary if London was to recover. Encouraged by Charles, radical rebuilding schemes for the gutted City poured in. If it had been rebuilt under these plans, London would have rivalled Paris in Baroque magnificence (see Evelyn's plan on the right). Baroque art redirects here Please disambiguate such links to Baroque painting, Baroque sculpture, etc The Crown and the City authorities attempted to establish "to whom all the houses and ground did in truth belong" in order to negotiate with their owners about compensation for the large-scale re-modelling that these plans entailed, but that unrealistic idea had to be abandoned. Exhortations to bring workmen and measure the plots on which the houses had stood were mostly ignored by people worried about day-to-day survival, as well as by those who had left the capital; for one thing, with the shortage of labour following on the fire, it was impossible to secure workmen for the purpose. Apart from Wren and Evelyn, it is known that Robert Hooke, Valentine Knight and Richard Newcourt proposed rebuilding plans. Robert Hooke, FRS (18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703 was an English Natural philosopher and Polymath who played an important role in the

John Evelyn's plan never carried out, for rebuilding a radically different City of London. John Evelyn ( 31 October 1620 – 27 February 1706) was an English writer gardener and diarist For London as a whole see the main article London. The City of London is a geographically

Sir Christopher Wren. Sir Christopher Wren ( 20 October 1632 &ndash 25 February 1723) was a 17th century English Designer, Astronomer

The Monument, London to commemorate the Great Fire of London, designed by Sir Christopher Wren

With the complexities of ownership unresolved, none of the grand Baroque schemes for a City of piazzas and avenues could be realised; there was nobody to negotiate with, and no means of calculating how much compensation should be paid. Instead, the old street plan was re-created in the new City, with improvements in hygiene and fire safety: wider streets, open and accessible wharves along the length of the Thames, with no houses obstructing access to the river, and, most importantly, buildings constructed of brick and stone, not wood. New public buildings were created on their predecessors' sites; perhaps the most famous is St. Paul's Cathedral and its smaller cousins, Christopher Wren's fifty new churches. St Paul's Cathedral, is the Anglican Cathedral on Ludgate Hill, in the City of London, and the seat of the Bishop of London.

On Charles' initiative, a Monument to the Great Fire of London, designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, was erected near Pudding Lane after the fire. The Monument to the Great Fire of London, more commonly known as The Monument, is a 61 metre (202 ft tall stone Roman doric column in the City of London, near Sir Christopher Wren ( 20 October 1632 &ndash 25 February 1723) was a 17th century English Designer, Astronomer Robert Hooke, FRS (18 July 1635 – 3 March 1703 was an English Natural philosopher and Polymath who played an important role in the Standing 61 metres tall and known simply as "The Monument", it is a familiar London landmark which has given its name to a tube station. For the station called Monument on the Tyne and Wear Metro, see Monument Metro station In 1668 accusations against the Catholics were added to the Monument which read, in part:

Aside from the four years of James II's rule from 1685 to 1689, the inscription remained in place until 1830 and the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act. James II of England and Ireland James VII of Scotland (14 October 1633 &ndash 16 September 1701 was King of England, King of Scots, Later that same year James Catholic Emancipation (Fuascailt na gCaitliceach or Catholic Relief, was a process in Great Britain and Ireland in the late 18th century and early 19th ^[56]

Another monument, the Golden Boy of Pye Corner in Smithfield, marks the spot where the fire stopped. The Golden Boy of Pye Corner is located on the corner of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane in Smithfield London. Smithfield (also known as West Smithfield) is an area in the north-west part of the City of London, mostly known for its centuries-old meat market and its bloody history According to the inscription, the fact that the fire started at Pudding Lane and stopped at Pye Corner was an indication that the Fire was evidence of God's wrath on the City of London for the sin of gluttony. Derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow gluttony is the over-indulgence and Over-consumption of food drink or intoxicants

The Great Plague epidemic of 1665 is believed to have killed a sixth of London's inhabitants, or 80,000 people,^[57] and it is sometimes suggested, given the fact that plague epidemics did not recur in London after the fire,^[58] that the Great Fire saved lives in the long run by burning down so much unsanitary housing with the accompanying rats and their fleas (which transmitted the plague). The Great Plague (1665-1666 was a massive outbreak of Disease in England that killed 75000 to 100000 people up to a fifth of London 's population Rats are various medium sized long-tailed Rodents of the superfamily Muroidea Flea is the Common name for any of the small wingless Insects of the order Siphonaptera (some authorities use the name Aphaniptera Historians disagree as to whether the fire played a part in preventing future major outbreaks. The Museum of London website claims that there was a connection,^[59] while historian Roy Porter points out that the fire left the most insalubrious parts of London, the slum suburbs, untouched. The Museum of London documents the history of London from the Prehistoric to the present day Roy Porter ( 31 December 1946 &mdash 3 March 2002) was a British Historian noted for his work on the History of medicine ^[60] Alternative epidemiological explanations have been put forward, along with the observation that the disease disappeared from almost every other European city at the same time. Epidemiology is the study of factors affecting the Health and Illness of populations and serves as the foundation and Logic of interventions made in the ^[61]

Notes

References

• Evelyn, John (1854). John Evelyn ( 31 October 1620 – 27 February 1706) was an English writer gardener and diarist Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, F.R.S.. London: Hursst and Blackett. Retrieved on 2006-11-05. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Events 1499 - Publication of the Catholicon in Treguier ( Brittany)   Also in text version:Evelyn, John (1857). John Evelyn ( 31 October 1620 – 27 February 1706) was an English writer gardener and diarist Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, F.R.S.. Retrieved on 2007-01-01. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. New Year See also New Year The Ancient Romans began their consular year on January 1st since 153 BC  

• Hanson, Neil (2001). The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London. New York: Doubleday.   For a review of Hanson's work, see Lauzanne, Alain. Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone (English). Cercles. Retrieved on 2006-10-12. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Events 539 BC - The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon.
• Morgan (2000). Oxford Illustrated History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford.  
• Pepys, Samuel (1995). Samuel Pepys, FRS (23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703 was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament, who is now most famous for in Robert Latham and William Matthews (eds. Robert Latham could refer to Robert Gordon Latham (1812&ndash1888 English ethnologist and philologist William Matthews may be William Matthews (baseball player William Matthews (composer William Matthews (editor ): The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol. 7. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-499027-7.   First published between 1970 and 1983, by Bell & Hyman, London. Quotations from and details involving Pepys are taken from this standard, and copyright, edition. All web versions of the diaries are based on public domain 19th century editions and unfortunately contain many errors, as the shorthand in which Pepys' diaries were originally written was not accurately transcribed until the pioneering work of Latham and Matthews.
• Porter, Roy (1994). Roy Porter ( 31 December 1946 &mdash 3 March 2002) was a British Historian noted for his work on the History of medicine London: A Social History. Cambridge: Harvard.  
• Reddaway, T. F. (1940). The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. London: Jonathan Cape.  
• Robinson, Bruce. Bruce Robinson (born) is an English director and Screenwriter. London: Brighter Lights, Bigger City. BBC. Retrieved on 2006-08-12. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Events 1099 - First Crusade: Battle of Ascalon - Crusaders under the command of Godfrey of Bouillon defeat Fatimid  
• Sheppard, Francis (1998). London: A History. Oxford: Oxford.  
• Tinniswood, Adrian (2003). By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London. London: Jonathan Cape.  

See also

• Great Plague of London
• The Second Great Fire of London
• Great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead, 1854
• Great Chicago Fire
• Thomas Vincent - a Puritan minister's eyewitness account

External links

• BBC history site
• Museum of London answers questions
• Channel 4 animation of the spread of the fire
• Child-friendly Great Fire of London site
• Fire of London website produced by the Museum of London, The National Archives, the National Portrait Gallery, London Fire Brigade Museum and London Metropolitan Archives for Key Stage 1 pupils (ages 5–7) and teachers