Pepys climbed the church tower (brave, given its clock had burned) and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw; everywhere great fires, oylecellars and brimstone and other things burning. Last updated 2011-02-17. Gigantic encampments of around 100,000 homeless people appeared outside the city walls. These cookies allow us to target other information on our website, like advertising, towards your interests. Overall, there were fewer houses (some scholars say a reduction of 20%, others say as much as 39%), partly due to amalgamation of sites and some owners' wish to have larger houses. Some structures had survived. WebThe Great Fire of London started in a bakers shop in Pudding Lane on 2 September 1666, and by the time it was extinguished four days later, it had destroyed seven-eighths of the She runs the online magazine The History Vault and is currently studying for her PhD on Restoration London during the Great Plague and the Great Fire at University College London. The Fire Court was set up to deal with property disputes and decide who should pay - and did so for a decade after the fire. The diarist was helped by the wife of a colleague, Sir William Batten, when, at 4am on Monday 3 September, she sent a cart to carry his things to the safety of a house in Bethnal Green. The Guildhall needed a new roof, but was otherwise relatively unscathed. Video, The endangered languages that are fighting back, Sacked teacher vows to defend 20 years of absence, South Koreans become a year younger under new law, French police kill teen who refused traffic stop, Pompeii archaeologists discover 'pizza' painting, Illegal trade in AI child sex abuse images exposed. It is unlikely the medieval church would have stood for much longer, but the fire enabled Wren to realise the full extent of his vision for a new cathedral for London. But these proved of little use in the event of a fire which spread so fast. The British government has also allocated billions of dollars to fund the removal of unsafe cladding in England, but critics said the funds were largely insufficient and many people who owned apartments in unsafe buildings found themselves having to endure burdensome costs to fix them and struggled to hold developers accountable. "Though we do not know exactly how many people died as a result of the Great Fire of London, it was almost certainly more than commonly accepted figures," says historian Rebecca Rideal. That night, he and his wife went for a drink on the South Bank, the City glowing red in the night. A year later he was apprenticed as a baker under one Thomas Dodson. The Great Fire of London started at around 1am on Sunday 2 September 1666. Much merchandise had been destroyed, and there was virtually no fire insurance, so many people were ruined, and some moved away permanently. Fourteen-yearold schoolboy William Taswell, who roamed the ruins, describes his father being robbed by people pretending to help Its a mystery as to why more deaths arent recorded, Much of the blame culture was so Londoners could avoid looking at themselves. And boy did it burn! In January, the British government announced plans to overhaul the governments approach to building safety across England, and has made moves to ensure that the costs of fixing fire safety issues are shouldered by the developers. He watched a poor cat taken out of a hole in the chimney, joyning to the wall of the Exchange; with, the hair all burned off the body, and yet alive. If you look at the discourse of the time, there was never any connection between the end of plague and Great Fire, Heyl says. sung as a round. We discover what happened after The Fire was finally put out - how London was rebuilt and how we remember The Fire today. Pyle claimed that there had been a huge fight between 60,000 Presbyterians and the militia, which had resulted in the death and imprisonment of 30,000 rebels. A sketch from 1673 by Thomas Wyck shows the extent of the ruins of St Pauls Cathedral that remained. 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 couldn't possibly be worse! Get messy, explore and appreciate nature, all from the safety of home! To halt the spread of flames, jettying upper storeys or protruding signs were banned and party walls mandated. When crisis strikes, opportunity knocks, as the improvers of Restoration London knew all too well. Pepys wasnt the only one. The new lord mayor, Sir William Bolton, for whom everyone had high hopes after Bloodworth, was in charge of administrating the 12,000 raised. But then Jane reappeared with bad news. The mapmakers even guessed at the future shape of St Paul's Cathedral, even though only the foundation of the east end had been laid. And, according to a report from a government-commissioned investigation, the London Fire Brigade failed to revoke the stay put advice at a time when the stairs remained passable.. But at the time, there seemed no consolation. September 2021 marks 335 years since the Great Fire destroyed four-fifths of London in 1666. Thomas and his family sure didnt stick around they escaped through their upstairs window and onto the neighbours roof! But when Pepys caught up with Sir Thomas Bloodworth in Canning Street, the mayor was like a fainting woman, with a handkerchief tied around his face to protect him from the smoke. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. Ask a parent or guardian to check it out first and remember to stay safe online. His story was shaky he claimed he started the fire in Westminster, despite the flames never even reaching that far, then changed his tale to Pudding Lane, the fires base. 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. We use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. The cladding, which has been used in several other buildings across England, is not allowed on high-rise buildings in many countries, including the United States, because of fire danger. 10 lesser-known facts about the Great Fire of London, Great Fire of London: through the eyes of Samuel Pepys, Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of Restoration London, Alexander Larman and Nicholas Kenyon discuss the events and legacy of the 1666 blaze. Their protruding upper storeys, jetties, almost met at the top. He was knighted in 1673 and went on to design many other famous London landmarks, including the royal hospitals at Greenwich and Chelsea. On narrow, dirty and dark streets, rickety houses were built from wood and thatch. wow! Architect Sir Christopher Wren was involved with improvements to the pre-fire cathedral and had submitted designs just weeks before the fire, including cladding it in Portland stone and putting a dome on top of the existing tower. I did remove my money and iron chests into my cellar, as thinking that the safest place, recounts Pepys. "There are reports that local people brought their furniture to the churchyard as they thought it would be safe and stacked it high against the cathedral walls," said Simon Carter, head of collections at St Paul's Cathedral. A grpah showing the mortality rate during the Great Plague of London from 1665-1666. However, Thomas denied this theory until the day he died, claiming his oven was put out properly. Grenfell Tower was built in the 1970s, and its concrete structure, originally built without cladding, was designed to contain a fire in one apartment for long enough to allow firefighters to intervene. When Wren visited Paris, he became inspired by continental baroque design, which, combined with his love of physics and engineering, created his own unique style. Five ways the Great Fire changed London - BBC News Many landlords required tenants to continue paying for homes that didnt exist anymore some even claimed tenants should rebuild their homes at their own expense. 2023 BBC. The trial was recorded in the London Gazette, which revealed that the plotters purportedly had the support of a conspirator in Holland and had planned to execute their Hellish design on the anniversary of Oliver Cromwells death, 3 September. Follow her on Twitter at @MsBeckyLittle. History KS1: The Great Fire of London - BBC Teach What happened after The Great Fire? HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. On Monday, Stuart Cundy, deputy assistant commissioner of Londons Metropolitan Police, said in a statement that the agency has more than 180 investigators dedicated to the Grenfell fire investigation and that they are working with international experts. Refugees, who had lost everything overnight, camped in the open air. Strict building regulations dictated construction. Its brand-new rose window had been based on one in the old St Pauls and, today, provides an idea as to how the previous cathedral looked. That's very sad for the people of London but at least they made the city better after the fire. Grenfell Tower has been clad in plastic sheeting since the fire in 2017. What happened to London after the Great Fire destroyed over 13,000 buildings?The country was amid war with the French and Dutch, so many Englishman first blamed foreigners, and while the city smoldered, mobs attacked immigrant populations. Most of what we know about the Great Fire of London came from the diaries of two men called Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, who both left eyewitness accounts of this famous tragedy. The ruins of the west portico of Inigo Jones, in its day a noted piece of architecture, were regretfully removed by Wren in 1688. Preachers blamed the fire on London's gluttony, while the government hanged a man who falsely confessed to starting the fire.#LondonFire #BritishHistory #WeirdHistory So although London continued to report plague victims until 1679, the major outbreak was mostly over by September 2, 1666, the night a baker named Thomas Farriner unwittingly started the Great Fire of London. this was so cool to learn about!!!! Much has been made of the apparent newness of these houses and the related phenomenon of residential squares. Sir Christopher Uh oh! When his wife Elizabeth woke him at 2am with the flames at the bottom of their lane, it was time to get out. The courtyard houses and the second type, which fronted major streets, were restricted to four storeys in height whereas before the Fire they were sometimes six. An illustration of the The fire raged for four days straight, until its final fizzles were extinguished on Thursday 6 September 1666. In 17th century London, not only were buildings made from wood and straw, but they stood very close together, making it easy for fire to spread. Thomas wasnt your average baker, though he was King Charles IIs baker. His pice de resistance was, of course, St Pauls Cathedral. At Whitehall, a frightened Pepys warned Charles II that unless his majesty did command houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire. In the course of the next century, building legislation expanded on the effects of these early measures, with the 1709 and 1774 London Building Acts especially contributing to a widespread standardisation of design and building methods pioneered in 1667. This sudden contrast took generations to erase. Louis XIV publicly ordered that he would not tolerate any rejoicings about it [the Great Fire], being such a deplorable accident involving injury to so many unhappy people, and offered to send aid in the shape of food provisions and anything else that might be required to relieve the suffering of those left destitute.