The Great Fire of London: An Illustrated History of the Great Fire of 1666

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Minott-Ahl, Nicola (September 2006). "Building Consensus: London, the Thames, and Collective Memory in the Novels of William Harrison Ainsworth". Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London. 4 (2). Hmm. We must command the Lord Mayor to pull down all the houses in front of the fire, so it has no fuel to burn, then the fire will die down. Field, Jacob (2017). London, Londoners and the Great Fire of 1666: Disaster and Recovery. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-09932-3. Garrioch, David (2016). "1666 and London's fire history: a re-evalulation". The Historical Journal. 59 (2): 319–338. doi: 10.1017/S0018246X15000382. Fires were common in the crowded wood-built city with its open fireplaces, candles, ovens, and stores of combustibles. A thousand watchmen or "bellmen" who patrolled the streets at night watched for fire as one of their duties. [31] Self-reliant community procedures were in place for dealing with fires, and they 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 fight the fire. [32]

Hanson, 77–80. The section "Fire hazards in the City" is based on Hanson, 77–101 unless otherwise indicated.Rat: So, Pepys went to command the Lord Mayor to pull down the houses, while King Charles II followed up the Thames in his royal barge to see the fire for himself. This article is about the 1666 fire of London. For other "Great Fires", see List of historic fires. For other notable fires in London, see Early fires of London and Second Great Fire of London. A fire broke out at Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane [a] a little after midnight on Sunday 2 September. 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, thus becoming the first victim. [46] 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. The householders protested, and Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth was summoned to give his permission. [47]

A special Fire Court was set up from February 1667 to December 1668, and again from 1670 to February 1676. The aim of the court, which was authorized by the Fire of London Disputes Act and the Rebuilding of London Act 1670, was to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. Cases were heard and a verdict usually given within a day; without the Fire Court, lengthy legal proceedings would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was so necessary if London was to recover. [132] [133] Townspeople: Fire! Fire! We need to tell somebody about this… I wish someone would invent the telephone. And the fire brigade.Let’s get The Lord Mayor. By the 1660s, London was by far the largest city in Britain and the third largest in the Western world, estimated at 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants. [6] [7] John Evelyn, contrasting London to the Baroque magnificence of Paris in 1659, called it a "wooden, northern, and inartificial congestion of Houses". [8] By "inartificial", Evelyn meant unplanned and makeshift, the result of organic growth and unregulated urban sprawl. [9] London had been a Roman settlement for four centuries and had become progressively more crowded inside its defensive city wall. It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into extramural settlements such as Shoreditch, Holborn, Cripplegate, Clerkenwell and Southwark, and the Inns of Court. To the West it reached along Strand to the Royal Palace and Abbey at Westminster. [9] [10] Toby and The Great Fire of London by Margaret Nash – a simple story (under 400 words) with lots of great pictures.Throughout Monday, the fire spread to the west and north. [58] The spread to the south was mostly halted by the river, but it had torched the houses on London Bridge and was threatening to cross the bridge and endanger the borough of Southwark on the south bank of the river. London Bridge, the only physical connection between the City and the south side of the river Thames, had been noted as a deathtrap in the fire of 1633. [59] However, Southwark was preserved by an open space between buildings on the bridge which acted as a firebreak. [60] [61] Martin, Andrew (2013). Underground Overground: A Passenger's History of the Tube. Profile Books. ISBN 978-1-84668-478-4.

Some of my readers may have an interest in being informed whether or not any portions of the Marshalsea Prison are yet standing. I myself did not know, until I was approaching the end of this story, when I went to look. I found the outer front courtyard, often mentioned here, metamorphosed into a butter shop. The Great Fire Dogs by Megan Rix – follow the adventures of two dogs, Woofer and Tiger Lily, as they brave The Great Fire of 1666. a b c d e Hebbert, Michael (2020). "The long after-life of Christopher Wren's short-lived London plan of 1666". Planning Perspectives. 35 (2): 231–252. doi: 10.1080/02665433.2018.1552837. According to Jacob Field, "the reaction to the Fire revealed England's long-standing hostility to Catholics, which manifested itself most visibly at times of crisis". [120] 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. [151] [120] The Royalist perspective of the fire as accidental was opposed by the Whig view questioning the loyalties of Catholics in general and the Duke of York in particular. [152] By the late 17th century, the City proper—the area bounded by the city wall and the River Thames—was only a part of London, covering some 700 acres (2.8km 2; 1.1sqmi), [11] and home to about 80,000 people, or one quarter of London's inhabitants. The City was surrounded by a ring of inner suburbs where most Londoners lived. [7] The City was then, as now, the commercial heart of the capital, and was the largest market and busiest port in England, dominated by the trading and manufacturing classes. [12] The City was traffic-clogged, polluted, and unhealthy, especially after it was hit by a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague in the Plague Year of 1665. [7]Townsperson: I’ve heard that more than 300 houses have been burned by a fire, Sir, and it’s still going.