Great Fire of London

For four days in September 1666, from early on Sunday the 2nd to Wednesday the 5th, a fire driven by a strong east wind burned through the old City of London, the walled commercial heart of England's capital. It destroyed some 13,200 to 13,500 houses, 86 or 87 parish churches and St Paul's Cathedral, and drove a vast number of people into makeshift camps in the surrounding fields. The rebuilt City kept its medieval street plan but was built mainly in brick and stone, and the disaster led to new building rules and the first fire insurance companies.

London in the 1660s had perhaps 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants, making it much the biggest city in Britain. The City itself, inside the old Roman wall and along the Thames, held about 80,000 of them in narrow lanes of timber houses, workshops and warehouses full of flammable goods. It had only just endured the Great Plague of London of 1665, and England was at war with the Dutch Republic and France. Fires were common and were normally tackled by neighbours and parish officers, whose main technique was to pull down buildings to create firebreaks.

Shortly after midnight on 2 September a fire broke out in Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane. The baker's family escaped through an upstairs window into the house next door, but their maidservant stayed behind and died, the first recorded victim. The Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, refused to order neighbouring houses pulled down, partly because their owners could not be found, and famously dismissed the blaze as trivial. By morning the wind had carried the flames to the riverside warehouses. The diarist Samuel Pepys watched from the Tower of London, then took a boat to Whitehall and told King Charles II that only demolition could stop the fire. The king ordered houses pulled down, but by the evening the fire had become a firestorm that jumped any gaps the demolition crews could make.

On Monday the fire spread north and west into the centre of the City, while refugees jammed the narrow streets and city gates with carts and bundles. Rumours that foreigners were starting fires led mobs to attack French and Dutch residents. The king's brother James, Duke of York, directed much of the firefighting. Tuesday, 4 September, was the worst day: the flames leapt the River Fleet, threatening Whitehall, swept through the wealthy shopping street of Cheapside, and set alight the wooden scaffolding around St Paul's Cathedral, which was gutted within hours. To the east, the garrison of the Tower used gunpowder to blow up houses and create firebreaks that saved the fortress.

On Tuesday evening the wind dropped, and on Wednesday the firebreaks held. About 15 per cent of London's housing had been destroyed, along with the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, many livery company halls and three of the western city gates. Officially only a handful of deaths were recorded, but some historians argue that the true toll, including the poor and those who later died of exposure in the refugee camps, may have been far higher. A French watchmaker, Robert Hubert, falsely confessed to starting the fire and was hanged, although it later emerged he had not been in London when it began. Many Londoners blamed Catholics or foreigners.

A special Fire Court settled disputes between landlords and tenants. Ambitious plans for a new city of straight avenues by Christopher Wren, John Evelyn and others were abandoned, but the Rebuilding Act of 1666 banned timber exteriors, and streets were widened. Most private houses had been rebuilt by 1671. Wren designed the new St Paul's Cathedral and 51 new City churches, and with Robert Hooke the Monument, a column completed in 1676 near Pudding Lane. In 1681 an inscription blaming Catholics was added to it; it was removed only in 1830.

Our 1650 map shows the Kingdom of England shortly before the fire, and the 1700 map shows it after London's rebuilding.