When was the Great Fire of London? Who did Charles ask to make a plan of London? And boy did it burn! He was hung at Tyburn on October 29, 1666. The Diary of Samuel Pepys Great Fire of London, (September 25, 1666), the worst fire in Londons history. (Clue: There are five different ideas in this source.) One of the most famous disasters in London's history, the Great Fire of London in 1666 devastated the heart of England's capital, destroying more than 13,000 houses and badly damaging landmarks including St Paul's Cathedral and the Royal Exchange. Great Fire of London begins - HISTORY Armed mobs eventually took to the streets and pounced on anyone with a foreign accent. Despite his love of symmetry and mathematics, Wren skewed the alignment of the cathedral from east to west to avoid the old foundations, which he did not trust. Its that kind of level, its that vague.. Three myths about the Great Fire of London | Museum of London We place some essential cookies on your device to make this website work. We bring you the facts. Ask your teacher for a map of London today. The flames spread through the house, down Pudding Lane and into the nearby streets. The wait was not a long one. (Clue: number of hearths and ovens x 1 shilling). A second report on the fire that week, however, was not forthcoming. His colleagues claimed he was unbalanced and the details of his confession changed as flaws were continually unearthed. Who fell in love. Five plans were submitted to rebuild the City of London, including one from Wren, who envisaged wide streets branching out from a huge memorial to the fire. What Disease Did The Fire Of London Stop? - Knowledge WOW reveals what to expect from our groundbreaking new exhibition. Yet the greatest fear among Londoners was not fire. Several people judged to be foreigners were hurt during Wednesdays riot; contemporaries were surprised that no one had been killed. v3.0. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. All Rights Reserved. 42.39/142. If you seek his monument, look round. Watch: Why did the Great Fire of London happen? The Great Fire of London Facts - National Geographic Kids In fact, thatch had been banned within the City of London by building regulations dating back to 1189. And 1681 was a big year for anti-Catholic rhetoric, prompted in part by the dragonnades in France that forced French Protestants to convert to Catholicism and, closer to home, by the so-called Popish Plot, a fictitious Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II entirely invented by a former Church of England curate whose false claims resulted in the executions of as many as 35 innocent people. Written by David Long, author of Hidden City: The Secret Alleys, Courts, Thank goodness for the National Health Service! As far as we know, it wasnt. A rumor went up that the French were invading the city, then the cry: Arms, arms, arms!, Theyre traumatized, theyre bruised, and they all, hundreds and thousands of them, they take up sticks and come pouring into the city, says Tinniswood. Poor souls they could not have imagined the new disaster that was to befall them in 1666. According to The Telegraph, though, we do know some of the important details. VideoWatch Newsround - signed and subtitled. A fire could easily get out of control. He refused to leave his house on Shoe Lane even though his son & friends begged him to go. But with that came the chance to rebuild the city. The river swarmed with vessels filled with persons carrying away as many of their goods as they were able to save. Rumors traveled fast, for one thing: The streets are full of people, moving their goods Theyre having to evacuate two, three, four times, Tinniswood explains, and with each move, theyre out in the street, passing information. On Tuesday, King Charles II ordered that houses and shops be pulled down to stop the fire from spreading. But how much do you really know about the blaze? With Bloodworth dithering, Pepys went to Whitehall, informing the King and his brother James, Duke of York, of the situation. Over 400 acres of the city had burned, leaving behind a desert of charred stone and smoldering wood beams. Can you find any more? It destroyed a large part of the City of London, including most of the civic buildings, old St. Paul's Cathedral, 87 parish churches, and about 13,000 houses. 41 Questions from Britannicas Most Popular World History Quizzes, This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Fire-of-London, Academia - The Great Fire of London, 1666, Eyewitnesstohistory.com - The Great Fire of London, 1666, Science Museum - Great fire of London: How science rebuilt a city, History Learning Site - The Great Fire of London, Museum of London - All you need to know about The Great Fire, Great Fire of London - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Great Fire of London - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). How much do you know about Docklands history? The numbers of people dying from plague were already in decline from the winter of 1665 onwards. The rumors spread faster than the blaze that engulfed London over five days in September 1666: that the fire raging through the citys dense heart was no accident it was deliberate arson, an act of terror, the start of a battle. An inventory from the same year shows the parish of St Botolph's, Billingsgate, half a mile from Pudding Lane, had 36 buckets and a ladder. Yet the greatest fear among Londoners was not fire. Why Hubert said he did it remains unclear, although there is a significant body of literature on why people confess to things they couldnt possibly have done. 2023 BBC. Thames Water collapse: What is Thames Waters area what does it do in London? The Church of St. Magnus the Martyr went up in smokeone of the first of the 84 churches lost in the fireas did dozens of riverside guildhalls and warehouses. There were no access points to get to the water without stopping the flow, and in the panic to try and extinguish the fire the pipes were broken and the water drained away. The second is John Evelyn, who also kept a diary. The London Gazette and Rege Sincera's Observations both Historical and Moral upon the Burning of London both mention timber buildings as a problem but not thatch. Sparks from the oven fell onto some dry flour sacks and they caught fire. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. The Great Fire of London. The disaster affected such a large area that thousands of brick houses had to be built to replace those that had been destroyed. Yet by dawn London Bridge was burning: an open space on the bridge, separating two groups of buildings, had acted as a firebreak in 1632. She covers the weird stuff for Smithsonian.com, Boing Boing, Slate, mental_floss, and others, and she's the author of Princesses Behaving Badly. It started in Pudding Lane in the shop of the kings baker, Thomas Farrinor. It would prove as equally efficient as fire in taking lives. Oil painting of the Great Fire seen from Ludgate, c1670. An hour later, the ground floor of the building was filled with smoke. Pepys described a most horrid malicious bloody flame that stretched for over a mile. Fire! As the fire spread, so too did wild rumors about its cause. When a fire began in Thomas Farriner's bakery in London's Pudding Lane in the early hours of 2 September, no-one could have foreseen the damage it would cause. At first, few were overly concerned about the fire. Not for the last time would a nation honour its brave fire fighters. The fire still spread, helped by a strong wind from the east. But these proved of little use in the event of a fire which spread so fast. His company even had its own fire brigade for those who had bought insurance and policyholders were given plaques for their homes displaying their policy number, so the brigade would know which fires to put out. By 1666, the vast majority of houses in the City would have been tiled. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Buildings that Survived the Great Fire of London. Corrections? Architects seized on the opportunity and presented ambitious building schemes, some of which called for boulevards and piazzas modeled after the great cities of France and Italy. A monument was erected in Pudding Lane on the spot where the fire began and can be seen today, where it is a reminder of those terrible days in September 1666. even more panic!! In the end, however, the new London looked much the same as the old one, albeit with wider alleys and more brick structures. A ten-year-old boy called Edward Taylor and his family were questioned for throwing fireballs at an open window in Pudding Lane and in the streets. Name them. It looks at the story of the Fire of London through evidence relating to some of the key characters Thomas Farrinor and Charles II. Oil painting of the Great Fire, seen from Newgate. The City of London had sided with the Parliamentarians; six years later, Londoners still didnt entirely trust their monarch. Samuel Pepys, who was a clerk of the Privy Seal, hurried off to inform King Charles II. Samuel Pepys, one of the most famous chroniclers of the fire. Last updated 2011-03-29. Now the London Fire Brigade, it celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. In a city where open flames were used for heat and light, fires were common. Exhibition, commemorating the 350th anniversary of the fire. | The report was given to Parliament on January 22, 1667, but excerpts from the proceedings transcripts were leaked to the public, published in a pamphlet. It did so again: only a third of the bridge was burned, saving Southwark from destruction and confining the fire to the City of London, on the north bank. By this time, just a few months after the fire, the narrative had changed. 27 Jun 2023 15:59:58 The medieval cathedral, which was more than 500 years old when the fire broke out, had suffered years of neglect and was even used by Oliver Cromwell as a stable for his horses. Pudding Lane was (and still is) located in the centre of the City of London, the medieval city of around one square mile ringed by ancient Roman walls and gates and rivers now covered and forgotten. This is the myth that I hear people talking about most often. Great Fire of London | disaster, London, England, United Kingdom [1666] A woman might piss it out!. Fearing that the entire city would burn, King Charles II placed his brother James II, Duke of York, in charge of firefighting efforts. Absolute chaos reigned, as often happens today, as thousands of sightseers from the villages came to view the disaster. London Bridge and St Pauls Cathedral were both burnt. ID no. All told, the Great Fire had destroyed 13,200 buildings and left an estimated 100,000 people homeless. He was brought in for questioning and bizarrely, told authorities that hed set the fire, that he was part of a gang, that it was all a French plot. Whatever the cause, at around 1 a.m., Farriner awoke to find his house in flames. No fire had ever grown as big as the Great Fire of London before. a 26-year-old watchmakers son from Rouen, France, had been stopped at Romford, in Essex, trying to make it to the east coast ports. The Londoners felt that It cant have been an accident, it cant be God visiting this upon us, especially after the plague, this has to be an act of war.. As the fire raged on, people tried to leave the city and poured down to the River Thames in an attempt to escape by boat. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). While Pepys was busy evacuating his house - digging a pit in which he buried 'a parmazan cheese as well as my wine and some other things' - he had an inspiration. Map showing the extent of the damage caused by the Great Fire. More troubling, however, was that Londoners began to take vengeance into their own hands, says Tinniswood. Fire! In 1685 the Duke of Monmouth, rebelling against the new King, the Catholic James II, accused him of deliberately starting the fire. The Fire Prevention Regulations, printed by the City of London in 1668 stated: "That plugs be put into the pipes in the most convenient places or every street, whereof all inhabitants may take notice, that breaking of the pipes in disorderly manner maybe avoided.". After arriving to inspect the blaze, he pronounced it so insignificant that a woman might piss it out and returned to bed. On Sunday, September 2, 1666, the fire began accidentally in the house of the kings baker in Pudding Lane near London Bridge. Surprisingly, only nine people died as a result of the fire. The King's Guard assaulted strangers for speaking poor English, and everywhere there was 'a great alarm of French and Dutch being risen', as Pepys reported. In successive years of the 17th century, London suffered two terrible disasters. Lord love a psychopath. Who were the Quake doctors, how do you cure warts and what was. BBC 2014 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Physician Nicholas Barbon capitalised on the business opportunity, setting up the first insurance company, the Fire Office, in 1667. Although Charles II immediately ordered Bloodworth to destroy as many houses as necessary to contain the fire, early efforts to create firebreaks were overcome by the strength of the wind, which enabled the fire to jump gaps of even twenty houses. The Great Fire is commemorated by The Monument, a column erected in the 1670s near the source of the blaze. The fire is supposed to have wiped out Londons rats and fleas that spread the plague and burned down the insanitary houses which were a breeding ground for the disease. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. The street layout mostly remained the same, and within 10 years the area ravaged by fire had been rebuilt, bringing new architecture to the old city quickly and on a large scale. It was also the first cathedral built in a Protestant England and Wren's design reflected the change from Catholicism. This wind blowing from the east was forcing the fire across the city much quicker than people were expecting, explains Meriel Jeater, curator of the Museum of Londons Fire! They may have read it in a childrens book or heard it at school. With only narrow streets dividing wooden buildings, the fire took hold rapidly, and within an hour the Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, had been woken with the news. The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, [1] gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the wall to the west. This caught fire, soon followed by the timber roof beams. Hollars Survey of the City of London, 1667(ZMAP 4/18) Archives, Open Government Licence 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. On Wednesday the fire slackened; on Thursday it was extinguished, but on the evening of that day the flames again burst forth at The Temple. Long Lane, Smithfield. Its height marks its distance from the site of the bakery where the fire began, An illustration showing London before the fire, top, and below, after the fire, One of the first ever insurance policy documents, signed by Nicholas Barbon, The Hand in Hand Insurance Company fire mark, which belonged to Thomas Boules who lived near St Paul's Cathedral, A fire squirt was like a large syringe, and would be used to shoot water at burning buildings, A fire bucket, believed to be from 1666. Although the Great Fire was a catastrophe, it did cleanse the city. A scapegoat was needed: the more foreign, the better. He was helped by a jury - that included three Farynors - and was hanged at Tyburn. Fires in London were common, even inevitable, given the capital's largely timber construction. College donates laptops to help children with studies, Police launch investigation into killing of Yoda the Chihuahua, Twin sisters among 10 killed by Russian strike in Ukraine, Anger in Paris after police kill teen in traffic stop, Countdown has begun to end of Putin, say Kyiv officials, Van life is far from glamorous on LA's streets, China crackdown pushes LGBT groups into the shadows, The endangered languages that are fighting back. Compounding the problem was that there were few official ways able to contradict the rumors not only had the newspapers printing press burned down, but so too did the post office. Many interesting details of the fire are given in Samuel Pepyss Diary. The Great Fire of London started at a bakery on Pudding Lane and eventually ended on Pie Corner. St Paul's is now one of London's most iconic buildings, but in 1666 it looked very different. In April 1665, Charles had warned the Lord Mayor of London of the danger caused by the narrow streets and overhanging timber houses. Within a few hours the Cathedral was a ruin. Great Fire of London - Wikipedia Bruce Robinson is a professional journalist who graduated with a first class degree in History from Cambridge University, specialising in English Social, Political and Economic History from 1300 to 1600. Not only that, but Londoners' hoped that the cathedral churchyard would be safe and inadvertently made the damage even worse. Instead, a plan was suggested to blow up houses in the path of the fire, so that there would be an area with no houses to act as fuel for the fire to keep growing. Great Fire of London 1666 - Historic UK Fire! Between September 2 and September 6, 1666, a massive inferno ripped through London, reducing much of the city center to a smoldering ruin. The Duke of York took control of efforts to stop the fire, with militias summoned from neighbouring counties to help the fight, and stop looting. His manservant also escaped, but another servant, a young woman, perished in the smoke and flames. The struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism in England had been long and bloody, and neither side was above what amounted to terrorism: TheGunpowder Plot of 1605was, after all, an English Catholic plot to assassinate James I. And because London was the manufacturing and trade engine of England, these buildings were also packed with flammable goods rope, pitch, flour, brandy and wool. The people of London who had managed to survive the Great Plague in 1665 must have thought that the year 1666 could only be better, and couldnt possibly be worse! As the Museum of London prepares to mark the 350th anniversary of. By the end of Sunday the fire had begun to travel against the wind, towards the Tower, and Pepys had begun to pack. 95.313. After the fire, there seems be a lot of paranoia that is was a Catholic plot, that Catholics in London would conspire with Catholics abroad and force the Protestant population to convert to Catholicism, Jeater explains. In the immediate aftermath of the fire of 1666, London was a smoking ruin, smoldering with suspicion and religious hatred and xenophobia. Importantly, building materials also changed. During the investigation a French Protestant watchmaker, Robert Hubert, confessed to having deliberately started the fire at the bakery with 23 conspirators. Plague had killed over 68,000 people in the previous two years. The sky was red with huge flames from the fire. We strive for accuracy and fairness. A fire started on September 2nd in the Kings bakery in Pudding Lane near London Bridge. Great Fire of London, 1666 | What Happened - HistoryExtra It made me weep to see it, he wrote. Get HISTORYs most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week. The causes of the fire and. And yet, Hubert insisted that hed set the fire. They only delivered six pints of water per squirt, were hard to steer and unreliable. In October 1666, he was brought to trial at the Old Bailey. London had already burned several times in its history, most notably in 1212, but in September 1666 the conditions were present for an inferno of epic proportions. When Thomas went to bed, he did not put out the fire that heated his oven. The summer of 1666 had been particularly dry, with drought making it more likely that fires would spread. The flames consumed 87 churches and 13,200 houses, leaving 100,000 Londoners homeless. Furthermore, a long, hot summer had left London dry and drought had depleted water reserves. London was a cramped, overcrowded city lighted by candles and fireplaces. Museum of London registered charity number 1139250, Follow us on Twitter for news, views and conversation about London, Join us on Facebook and share your views on current London issues, Browse our YouTube videos of teaching resources, London history, fashion and more, See objects from our collection, snapshots of events and share your visits with us on Instagram, Great Fire only burnt about a quarter of the urban metropolis. Gang leader behind two revenge murders locked up for at least 36 years, Harry Enfield jiggled my breasts at No10 party, says Sarah Vine, EastEnders star 'heartbroken' over brother's death in stabbing. Find Pepys description of the Great Fire of London on 4th September 1666, famously burying his parmazan cheese. 2023 BBC. How many houses in the city were destroyed by the fire? Both the King and the Duke of York were immersed in the battle against the fire, which was contained until late afternoon, when it jumped over the break at Mercers' Hall and began to consume Cheapside, London's widest and wealthiest street. The plaque remained in place until the middle of the 18th century, when it was removed not because people had had a change of heart, but because visitors stopping to read the plaque were causing a traffic hazard. The Catholic conspiracy story persisted for years: In 1681, the local ward erected a plaque on the site of the Pudding Lane bakery reading, Here by the permission of Heaven, Hell broke loose upon this Protestant city from the malicious hearts of barbarous Papists, by the hand of their agent Hubert, who confessed. It is suggested that teachers/helpers read through the documents together with the class. This was the last major outbreak of the bubonic plague in London, and killed 100,000 Londoners- about 20% of the city's population. Wren's gravestone in its grounds bears a Latin inscription which translates as: "If you seek his memorial, look about you.". Its still a surprisingly small number, given the huge amount of property damage: 80 percent of the city within the walls had burned, some 87 churches and 13,200 homes were destroyed, leaving 70,000 to 80,000 people homeless. St Pauls Cathedral (Clue: from above it looks like a cross, not a dome), Pudding Lane (Clue: north of the river, near the bridge). From 2-6 September 1666, the Great Fire of London raged through the capital, destroying one third of the city and obliterating famous buildings including St. Paul's Cathedral, Guildhall and the Royal Exchange. The 2 September 2016 marks 350 years since the start of the Great Fire of London, which changed the skyline of the capital city forever. Royal proclamations dating back over 60 years demanded that new buildings be built from brick.
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