September 2, 2025 • 22 mins
The History of The Great Fire of London
In September 1666, a spark in a London bakery turned into one of the most infamous infernos in history. The Great Fire of London roared through the city for four days, reducing thousands of homes, churches, and businesses to ash. But it wasn’t just destruction, it reshaped London forever. In this episode, we’ll follow the flames from Pudding Lane to the city walls, look at the chaos and rumors that spread as quickly as the fire itself, and explore how the disaster gave rise to modern firefighting, new architecture, and a rebuilt capital.
New Episodes: Mon/Wed/Fri
(If people enjoy, and feedback via reviews and ratings is good, will release daily)
Request an episode: thehistoryoftheemail@gmail.com
The History Of is your daily dose of weird, wonderful, and occasionally ridiculous history. Each episode takes one topic an object, a place, a job, a trend and unpacks the surprising story behind it. No homework, no boring lectures, just history you’ll actually want to share.
A podcast for all ages, if you enjoy please share it and leave a review because that tells me you want more.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-history-of--6664775/support.
In September 1666, a spark in a London bakery turned into one of the most infamous infernos in history. The Great Fire of London roared through the city for four days, reducing thousands of homes, churches, and businesses to ash. But it wasn’t just destruction, it reshaped London forever. In this episode, we’ll follow the flames from Pudding Lane to the city walls, look at the chaos and rumors that spread as quickly as the fire itself, and explore how the disaster gave rise to modern firefighting, new architecture, and a rebuilt capital.
New Episodes: Mon/Wed/Fri
(If people enjoy, and feedback via reviews and ratings is good, will release daily)
Request an episode: thehistoryoftheemail@gmail.com
The History Of is your daily dose of weird, wonderful, and occasionally ridiculous history. Each episode takes one topic an object, a place, a job, a trend and unpacks the surprising story behind it. No homework, no boring lectures, just history you’ll actually want to share.
A podcast for all ages, if you enjoy please share it and leave a review because that tells me you want more.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-history-of--6664775/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello, and welcome to the History of the Show for
anyone who flunked history but still wants to impress. At
Trivia Night. Each day we take one topic, an object,
a place, a job, a trend and uncover the weird, messy,
and sometimes ridiculous truth behind it. No homework, just history
you'll actually want to tell people about. Ready, let's get
(00:30):
into it. The Great Fire of London. London in the
early sixteen sixties was a city that felt both ancient
and restless, a maze of history waiting for trouble. It
was a place where the streets leaned in on each other,
so narrow that neighbors could gossip from window to window
without raising their voices. Most of the houses were timber framed,
(00:54):
with overhanging upper stories that gave the streets a tunnel
like feel. The ground floors often did workshops or storage
rooms packed with hay, pitch cloth, and barrels of tallow
while families lived above. Almost everything you could touch was flammable.
Fire was a constant companion, used for cooking, warmth and work,
(01:14):
and yet Londoners carried on as if nothing could possibly
go wrong. The city was still shaking off the shadow
of the Great plague of sixteen sixty five, Entire streets
had been marked with red crosses only the year before.
Families were still bearing their dead, businesses were reopening, and
life was trying to claw its way back to something
resembling normal, But the air held a sharp reminder of risk.
(01:38):
In the summer of sixteen sixty six, London baked under
weeks of hot, dry weather. Rain was rare, The Tames
smelled like a low tide that had given up. Wood
dried in its frames, and the thatched or shingled roofs
turned brittle. Even without superstition, a Londoner could feel that
the city was a tinderbox. Daily life in the city
revolved around fire. Candles were used in every home after sunset,
(02:03):
open hearths and stoves burned almost constantly. Blacksmiths, bakers, brewers,
and countless trades relied on flame to function. In an
era without a central fire brigade, the best defense was hope,
water buckets, and the willingness of your neighbors to help.
Fire Fighting technology consisted of leather buckets, hand pumped squirt guns,
and long poles with hooks to pull down burning thatch.
(02:25):
It was more optimism than science. Urban planning was almost
non existent by modern standards. Many lanes were winding and
unmarked houses tilted over alleys, upper floors practically touching across
the gap. The logic was simple, space was precious and
real estate went up, not out. The result was that
a fire could leap from one roof to another with
(02:46):
frightening ease. Add strong winds to the mix, and the
city was essentially a wooden puzzle waiting for a spark.
That spark came on the night of September first into
the early morning of September second, sixteen sixty six. In
a bakery on Pudding Lane, Thomas Farriner, sometimes recorded as
farronor ran a bakery that supplied the Royal Navy with
(03:07):
hard tack biscuits. His ovens were ordinary, his work routine
baking in the seventeenth century met working with massive wood
fired ovens that stayed hot long after the last loaf
came out that night. After the day's work, the embers
were left smoldering. Whether it was a stray spark, a
poorly raked fire, or some accident in the flammable clutter
(03:27):
of the bakery, the result was the same a small
fire began after midnight. At first, the danger seemed minor.
Londoners were used to the occasional chimney fire or shop blaze.
Thomas Farroner and his family managed to escape out a
window onto the neighboring roof, though one maid hesitated and perished,
becoming the fire's first victim. Neighbors rushed to help, bringing
(03:52):
buckets and shouting for assistance, but the fire moved faster
than expected. A stiff wind from the east caught the flames,
carrying embers onto nearby timber and thatch. The buildings that
had been stacked tightly for convenience now became a chain reaction.
Pudding Lane itself was a perfect stage for disaster. The
warehouses stored oil, tallow and pitch boats along the Thames
(04:14):
held tar and coal. A light wind became a courier
for sparks, sending them skipping across rooftops. What should have
been a controllable fire began to outpace the buckets and
hand pumps almost immediately. By dawn, it was clear that
this was no ordinary blaze. The Lord Mayor of London,
Sir Thomas Bludworth, was called to the scene. Legend has
(04:35):
it that he looked at the flames, shrugged, and declared
that a woman could put it out. Whether the exact
quote is true or not, his initial inaction was real.
The standard method to stop a fire that size was
to create fire breaks tear down neighboring houses to keep
the flames from leaping. But this required authorization and quick action.
Bloodworth hesitated, worried about property owners complaining and demanding compensation.
(05:00):
That delay was all the fire needed to become unstoppable.
As the morning sun rose on September second, Londoners watched
as the fire began to run. Wild Sparks carried by
the wind landed on dry roof tops. Flames raced down
alleys and through shop fronts. The city that had withstood
plague and politics now faced a quieter, more indifferent enemy.
(05:21):
This was not an attack by a foreign army or
an act of rebellion. This was the city turning against itself,
fueled by its own design, flaws and bad luck. The
smell of smoke mingled with the scents of baking bread,
burning pitch, and panic. Families rushed into the streets with
whatever they could carry. Carts were overloaded with bedding, food,
(05:42):
and children. Some people took to the river, loading what
they owned onto boats and barges. Those who stayed tried
desperately to fight the fire, but the methods were crude.
Water was pulled from the Thames and from street pumps,
but the sheer size of the blaze mocked their efforts.
By midday, the fire had consumed more than just Pudding Lane.
(06:04):
It had begun to move toward the heart of the city.
Saint Margaret's and Saint Michael's churches fell victim quickly. Whole
blocks disappeared in waves of flame. The wind carried cinders
far ahead of the main fire, starting new blazes faster
than they could be put out. Even those who thought
they were safe found sparks in their thatch or shutters.
Catching a light, the heat became intense enough to crack
(06:27):
stones and warp iron. London before the blaze had always
been noisy. Market stalls called out prices, carriages rattled, church
bells rang, and venders argued in the streets. But now
the soundscape changed. It was fire roaring like a forge,
timbers collapsing with dull booms, and the endless chorus of shouting, crying,
and clanging buckets. People who had survived plague and political
(06:50):
upheaval now faced a disaster that cared nothing for status
or luck. Fire leveled all distinctions. As night fell on
the first day, the city skyline glowed like a furnace,
Embers swirled in the dark, and the air was thick
with ash. For the people of London, the fire still
felt unreal, like a nightmare that would fade by morning.
(07:11):
But the perfect storm was already in place. A dry summer,
wooden streets, tight alleys, and a delayed response had turned
a single bakery mishap into a catastrophe waiting to happen.
This was only the beginning. In the days to come,
the fire would choose through churches, homes, and history itself,
leaving behind a city of ashes. But in that first
(07:32):
night and morning, it was still just a spark that
no one believed could swallow London whole. The morning of
September second, sixteen sixty six dawned with smoke already curling
over London. The city awoke to the sight of fire
that refused to die, and within hours it was clear
that this was not just a local accident. The fire
that began in a pudding lane bakery had found a
(07:53):
willing host in London's wooden heart. Houses with dry timbers
and thatched roofs offered themselves up like narrow streets acted
like funnels for the wind, and the wind itself. A
stiff breeze from the east became an accomplice, carrying sparks
to places that had yet to catch. In the early hours,
Londoners tried to fight it. Leather buckets passed hand to hand,
(08:15):
pumps wheezed, and people scrambled to pull down sheds and
shops in the fire's path. But fire moves faster than fear.
Eyewitnesses said the flames seemed to leap from roof to
roof as if alive. Samuel Peppis, the naval administrator and
avid diarist, rose that morning to see the fire from
his window. He described a terrifying sight, an orange glow
(08:35):
on the horizon, and smoke that seemed to swell like
a cloud of war. He would later note the poor
pigeons circling desperately above their burning roosts before falling into
the flames. The Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth arrived, but
hesitated to order firebreaks. Demolishing houses to save the city
was the only proven tactic against urban fires, but tearing
(08:57):
down the homes of the wealthy without their permission carried
political risk. He delayed, and the fire gained a lead
that no human effort could close. By afternoon, whole streets
were alight and families were fleeing with whatever they could carry.
Carts jammed the lanes leading to the city gates on
the river, Boats ferried goods and passengers towards safety, crowded
(09:19):
with barges piled high with furniture, crates, and even livestock.
By the night of September second, the fire had reached
the waterfront and threatened to consume the wharves and warehouses
along the river. These buildings were stocked with oil, timber, tar, sugar,
and spirits. When they caught, the blaze intensified into something
almost supernatural. Flames reflected off the water, and explosions rocked
(09:43):
the banks as barrels and gunpowder stores ignited. Peppis, after
witnessing the scale of the destruction, hurried to Whitehall to
inform King Charles. The King grasped what the Lord Mayor
had not. This was now a national emergency. The fire
became a monster. The wind picked up and drove the
flames westward toward the very heart of the city. Whole
parishes disappeared in a single day. The roar of the
(10:05):
fire was said to drown out bells and shouts. Smoke
blotted out the sun, leaving parts of the city in
an eerie twilight. This was the day the panic turned
to chaos. People dropped what they could not carry and
simply ran. Looting broke out in some areas. Rumors spread
faster than the fire itself. Stories of foreign saboteurs and
(10:26):
papist plots fueled suspicion and anger. Desperate citizens pointed fingers
at strangers in the streets, and a few unlucky foreigners
were attacked by mobs. It was also the day that
gunpowder came into play. King Charles and his brother, the
Duke of York, took a direct hand in the fire
fighting effort. They ordered the creation of fire breaks by
any means necessary, including blasting houses apart with explosives. It
(10:50):
was dangerous work, and it often came too late to
save the structures immediately behind the blasts. Still, it began
to slow the fire in some sectors. The King himself
was reportedly seen on horseback, encouraging workers and organizing demolitions.
His presence gave a sense of order to a city
that was otherwise dissolving into smoke and heat. On September fourth,
(11:11):
the inferno reached its peak in drama and destruction Old
Saint Paul's Cathedral, the pride of London's skyline, became a victim.
The medieval cathedral had stood for centuries, its stone shell
thought to be impervious, but renovations had left wooden scaffolding
along the walls, and the interior was filled with combustible
materials from printers and booksellers who rented space inside. When
(11:35):
the fire reached it, the cathedral became a chimney. Flames
shot up its spire, and the lead roof melted, running
down the streets like liquid silver. John Evelyn, another diarist
and gentleman observer, called it a dismal yet astonishing sight.
The collapse of Saint Paul's was more than physical. It
was a psychological blow to londoner's a sign that nothing
(11:57):
was safe and the city's very soul was in peril.
By this point, over four fifths of the medieval city
within the walls was either burning or already reduced to ash.
Streets were unrecognizable. Heat warped iron gates and cracked stone.
The wind carried sparks as far as the countryside, where
farmers reported showers of ash. For four days, the fire
(12:18):
devoured London, while the citizens lived in a nightmare of fleeing, watching,
and waiting. The fourth day, September fifth, brought a small
but crucial change. The wind began to die for the
first time since the disaster began. The fires advance slowed,
fire breaks, demolitions, and exhaustions started to work in tandem.
Soldiers and civilians dug in, pulling down buildings ahead of
(12:40):
the flames and drenching walls with water. Without the wind
to feed its leaps and bounds, the fire lost its
most dangerous advantage. By September sixth, the Great Fire of
London was effectively under control. Small fires would smolder for days,
and the city still smelled of smoke and soaked timber,
but the main blaze had been stopped. In just four days,
(13:01):
the fire had consumed roughly thirteen thousand houses, eighty seven churches,
the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall and the city's commercial lifeblood. Astonishingly,
official records counted relatively few deaths, though many historians suspect
that the true toll was higher. Fire left few remains
to count, and the poor were rarely recorded in the
first place. The psychological toll was immediate and deep. Survivors
(13:26):
wandered streets of ash, unsure where their homes had been.
Landmarks were gone, the familiar map of London had been
wiped clean. People camped in the open fields outside the city,
watching columns of smoke and wondering if the city they
knew would ever exist again. Some wept for their possessions,
others for the sense that London itself had suffered a judgment.
(13:48):
Sermons framed the fire as divine punishment, while secular authorities
looked for someone to blame. The Great Fire was not
the first urban disaster, but its speed and scale made
it unforgettable. It condensed centuries of urban growth into four
days of destruction. Eyewitnesses like Peppis and Evelyn gave posterity
the details the pigeons falling from the sky. The molten
(14:11):
led the human tide of flight and fear. For the
people who lived through it. London had burned, like a
vision of the end of the world. What remained now
was ash anger and the impossible question of what to
do next. When the smoke finally cleared in September sixteen
sixty six, London looked like a city that had lost
a war. Four fifths of the old medieval center was gone.
(14:32):
Thirteen thousand homes had been destroyed, along with shops, warehouses,
and churches. The familiar skyline of spires and timbered gables
had been flattened into a smoldering plane. Where once there
were crooked lanes and market stalls, now there were chimneys
standing alone, scorched beams, and blackened stones. The air carried
the smell of wet ash and burned tallow. For weeks,
(14:54):
survivors moved through streets they no longer recognized, some weeping,
some silent, all stunned by the scale of the disaster.
The immediate aftermath was defined by dislocation. Tens of thousands
were homeless. Estimates vary, but roughly seventy thousand to eighty
thousand people out of a population of about eighty thousand
in the walled city were displaced. They fled to the
(15:18):
fields of Moorfields, Finsbury and Islington, where makeshift camps of
tents and wagons sprang up. Families who had spent the
fire clutching what they could carry, now huddled under the
open sky, surrounded by whatever they had saved, bedding, cooking pots,
the odd chest of clothing For the wealthy country estates
(15:39):
or the houses of relatives offered refuge for the poor.
It was an ordeal of exposure and hunger. The fire
had not killed as many as feared, but its aftermath
was a humanitarian crisis. Public anger began almost immediately. Londoners
wanted someone to blame. The destruction seemed too total, too
fast to be a simple accident. Whisper of sabotage spread quickly.
(16:01):
The city had been tense with xenophobia for years, fueled
by the Second Anglo Dutch War and long standing anti
Catholic sentiment. In the chaotic days after the fire, mobs
attacked foreigners, especially French and Dutch residents, accusing them of
setting the blaze as an act of war or conspiracy.
One frenchman carrying tennis balls was nearly torn apart because
(16:24):
the crowd insisted the balls were fire grenades. Authorities facing
a furious and homeless population, leaned into the search for scapegoats.
The official story settled on Robert Hubert, a French watchmaker
with a history of mental illness. Hubert confessed to starting
the fire, claiming he had thrown a fireball through the
window of the Pudding Lane bakery. His story was full
(16:46):
of holes. He had not even arrived in London until
after the fire began, But in a climate of fear
and anger, the truth mattered less than closure. Hubert was tried, convicted,
and hanged at Tyburn. Historians agree he was almost certainly innocent,
a man swept into the city's need to see someone punished.
Once the initial shock and violence subsided, the practical question loomed.
(17:09):
How to rebuild London could not remain a field of
tents forever. King Charles the Second and his government recognized
both an opportunity and a challenge. The destruction had wiped
the slate clean in the city center. It was a
chance to modernize a medieval town that had been choking
on its own growth. But there were also pressing needs.
Merchants wanted to reopen their shops, citizens needed homes, The
(17:32):
economy could not wait for grand designs. Within weeks, temporary
markets and wooden shacks were erected to allow trade to resume,
but the government also moved to establish new regulations to
prevent another catastrophe. Streets were to be widened. Overhanging timbered
upper stories, which had acted like ladders for the fire,
were banned in the core city. New construction had to
(17:55):
be in brick or stone. Even the simple act of
storing flammable materials in central London faced tighter control. Christopher Wren,
a brilliant young architect and scholar, stepped into history during
this period. He had already been involved in plans to
repair and improve Saint Paul's Cathedral before the fire, but
now he was part of a team envisioning a new London.
(18:17):
Wren's proposals were bold. He imagined broad boulevards, piazzas, and
a rational street grid, something closer to Paris than the
medieval tangle that had burned. But reality as usual imposed itself.
The speed of rebuilding and the complexity of property rights
made such sweeping change impossible. Landowners wanted their plots back quickly,
(18:38):
and most streets were rebuilt along their original paths. London
did not become the Baroque masterpiece Wren had dreamed, but
his influence was lasting. He would rebuild Saint Paul's as
a Renaissance style dome rather than a Gothic spire, giving
London a new and iconic skyline. The rebuilding was not
just architectural, it was financial. Fire created the first large
(19:01):
scale urban insurance market in English history. Nicholas Barbin, a
physician turned entrepreneur, saw opportunity and fear. He founded the
Fire Office, offering insurance policies to homeowners and businesses. Clients
received small metal plaques to nail to their houses, signaling
that their property was covered. These plaques, embossed with the
insurer's emblem, became an early and very visible symbol of
(19:23):
risk management. Out of ashes came an entire industry. Psychologically,
the fire left a complicated legacy. On one hand, it
ended a period of horror that had started with the plague.
In a dark twist, the fire helped cleanse the city
of the diseases, lingering hotspots, as the rats and fleas
that thrived in the old alleys were displaced or destroyed.
(19:45):
On the other hand, it deepened London's sense of vulnerability.
A single spark had erased centuries of growth and memory.
Sermons framed it as divine punishment, warning the city to
remain humble and moral. Poets and diarists turned it into
story and symbol. Samuel Peppys's diary captured both the terror
and the absurdity, from the rivers choked with fleeing barges
(20:07):
to the molten lead flowing like deadly streams through the streets.
By the sixteen seventies, London was once again a functioning city,
though still scarred. New churches rose slowly. The new Saint
Paul's would not be completed until seventeen, ten decades after
the last ember had cooled. The memory of the fire, however, endured.
(20:27):
It lived in the new laws, in the wider streets,
and in the brick facades that replaced timber. It lingered
in the annual sermons and the tales told to anyone
who walked past the rebuilt Pudding Lane. Over time, the
Great Fire of London became part of the city's cultural identity.
It was a reminder of fragility and resilience, a story
of disaster that turned into renewal. School children learned the
(20:51):
tale of the bakery spark that became an inferno. Tourists
came to see the monument, the tall column erected to
commemorate the event and to climate steps for a view
of the modern city that grew from fire and ash.
Writers from Daniel Dafoe to modern historians, found in the
fire a lesson about human error, urban planning, and the
(21:11):
stubbornness of life. Why does this story endure? Partly because
it is dramatic, a medieval city, a single bakery, a
wind that would not quit, but also because it speaks
to something timeless. Cities are human creations, fragile in their
own ways. We build them as if they will last forever.
Yet history reminds us that all it takes is one night,
(21:32):
one spark, to turn permanence into memory. The Great Fire
of London is the story of a city humbled, then reborn,
and of the people who lived through the strange, smoky
days when the world they knew became a field of embers,
(22:00):
yem
Hello, and welcome to the History of the Show for
anyone who flunked history but still wants to impress. At
Trivia Night. Each day we take one topic, an object,
a place, a job, a trend and uncover the weird, messy,
and sometimes ridiculous truth behind it. No homework, just history
you'll actually want to tell people about. Ready, let's get
(00:30):
into it. The Great Fire of London. London in the
early sixteen sixties was a city that felt both ancient
and restless, a maze of history waiting for trouble. It
was a place where the streets leaned in on each other,
so narrow that neighbors could gossip from window to window
without raising their voices. Most of the houses were timber framed,
(00:54):
with overhanging upper stories that gave the streets a tunnel
like feel. The ground floors often did workshops or storage
rooms packed with hay, pitch cloth, and barrels of tallow
while families lived above. Almost everything you could touch was flammable.
Fire was a constant companion, used for cooking, warmth and work,
(01:14):
and yet Londoners carried on as if nothing could possibly
go wrong. The city was still shaking off the shadow
of the Great plague of sixteen sixty five, Entire streets
had been marked with red crosses only the year before.
Families were still bearing their dead, businesses were reopening, and
life was trying to claw its way back to something
resembling normal, But the air held a sharp reminder of risk.
(01:38):
In the summer of sixteen sixty six, London baked under
weeks of hot, dry weather. Rain was rare, The Tames
smelled like a low tide that had given up. Wood
dried in its frames, and the thatched or shingled roofs
turned brittle. Even without superstition, a Londoner could feel that
the city was a tinderbox. Daily life in the city
revolved around fire. Candles were used in every home after sunset,
(02:03):
open hearths and stoves burned almost constantly. Blacksmiths, bakers, brewers,
and countless trades relied on flame to function. In an
era without a central fire brigade, the best defense was hope,
water buckets, and the willingness of your neighbors to help.
Fire Fighting technology consisted of leather buckets, hand pumped squirt guns,
and long poles with hooks to pull down burning thatch.
(02:25):
It was more optimism than science. Urban planning was almost
non existent by modern standards. Many lanes were winding and
unmarked houses tilted over alleys, upper floors practically touching across
the gap. The logic was simple, space was precious and
real estate went up, not out. The result was that
a fire could leap from one roof to another with
(02:46):
frightening ease. Add strong winds to the mix, and the
city was essentially a wooden puzzle waiting for a spark.
That spark came on the night of September first into
the early morning of September second, sixteen sixty six. In
a bakery on Pudding Lane, Thomas Farriner, sometimes recorded as
farronor ran a bakery that supplied the Royal Navy with
(03:07):
hard tack biscuits. His ovens were ordinary, his work routine
baking in the seventeenth century met working with massive wood
fired ovens that stayed hot long after the last loaf
came out that night. After the day's work, the embers
were left smoldering. Whether it was a stray spark, a
poorly raked fire, or some accident in the flammable clutter
(03:27):
of the bakery, the result was the same a small
fire began after midnight. At first, the danger seemed minor.
Londoners were used to the occasional chimney fire or shop blaze.
Thomas Farroner and his family managed to escape out a
window onto the neighboring roof, though one maid hesitated and perished,
becoming the fire's first victim. Neighbors rushed to help, bringing
(03:52):
buckets and shouting for assistance, but the fire moved faster
than expected. A stiff wind from the east caught the flames,
carrying embers onto nearby timber and thatch. The buildings that
had been stacked tightly for convenience now became a chain reaction.
Pudding Lane itself was a perfect stage for disaster. The
warehouses stored oil, tallow and pitch boats along the Thames
(04:14):
held tar and coal. A light wind became a courier
for sparks, sending them skipping across rooftops. What should have
been a controllable fire began to outpace the buckets and
hand pumps almost immediately. By dawn, it was clear that
this was no ordinary blaze. The Lord Mayor of London,
Sir Thomas Bludworth, was called to the scene. Legend has
(04:35):
it that he looked at the flames, shrugged, and declared
that a woman could put it out. Whether the exact
quote is true or not, his initial inaction was real.
The standard method to stop a fire that size was
to create fire breaks tear down neighboring houses to keep
the flames from leaping. But this required authorization and quick action.
Bloodworth hesitated, worried about property owners complaining and demanding compensation.
(05:00):
That delay was all the fire needed to become unstoppable.
As the morning sun rose on September second, Londoners watched
as the fire began to run. Wild Sparks carried by
the wind landed on dry roof tops. Flames raced down
alleys and through shop fronts. The city that had withstood
plague and politics now faced a quieter, more indifferent enemy.
(05:21):
This was not an attack by a foreign army or
an act of rebellion. This was the city turning against itself,
fueled by its own design, flaws and bad luck. The
smell of smoke mingled with the scents of baking bread,
burning pitch, and panic. Families rushed into the streets with
whatever they could carry. Carts were overloaded with bedding, food,
(05:42):
and children. Some people took to the river, loading what
they owned onto boats and barges. Those who stayed tried
desperately to fight the fire, but the methods were crude.
Water was pulled from the Thames and from street pumps,
but the sheer size of the blaze mocked their efforts.
By midday, the fire had consumed more than just Pudding Lane.
(06:04):
It had begun to move toward the heart of the city.
Saint Margaret's and Saint Michael's churches fell victim quickly. Whole
blocks disappeared in waves of flame. The wind carried cinders
far ahead of the main fire, starting new blazes faster
than they could be put out. Even those who thought
they were safe found sparks in their thatch or shutters.
Catching a light, the heat became intense enough to crack
(06:27):
stones and warp iron. London before the blaze had always
been noisy. Market stalls called out prices, carriages rattled, church
bells rang, and venders argued in the streets. But now
the soundscape changed. It was fire roaring like a forge,
timbers collapsing with dull booms, and the endless chorus of shouting, crying,
and clanging buckets. People who had survived plague and political
(06:50):
upheaval now faced a disaster that cared nothing for status
or luck. Fire leveled all distinctions. As night fell on
the first day, the city skyline glowed like a furnace,
Embers swirled in the dark, and the air was thick
with ash. For the people of London, the fire still
felt unreal, like a nightmare that would fade by morning.
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But the perfect storm was already in place. A dry summer,
wooden streets, tight alleys, and a delayed response had turned
a single bakery mishap into a catastrophe waiting to happen.
This was only the beginning. In the days to come,
the fire would choose through churches, homes, and history itself,
leaving behind a city of ashes. But in that first
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night and morning, it was still just a spark that
no one believed could swallow London whole. The morning of
September second, sixteen sixty six dawned with smoke already curling
over London. The city awoke to the sight of fire
that refused to die, and within hours it was clear
that this was not just a local accident. The fire
that began in a pudding lane bakery had found a
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willing host in London's wooden heart. Houses with dry timbers
and thatched roofs offered themselves up like narrow streets acted
like funnels for the wind, and the wind itself. A
stiff breeze from the east became an accomplice, carrying sparks
to places that had yet to catch. In the early hours,
Londoners tried to fight it. Leather buckets passed hand to hand,
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pumps wheezed, and people scrambled to pull down sheds and
shops in the fire's path. But fire moves faster than fear.
Eyewitnesses said the flames seemed to leap from roof to
roof as if alive. Samuel Peppis, the naval administrator and
avid diarist, rose that morning to see the fire from
his window. He described a terrifying sight, an orange glow
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on the horizon, and smoke that seemed to swell like
a cloud of war. He would later note the poor
pigeons circling desperately above their burning roosts before falling into
the flames. The Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth arrived, but
hesitated to order firebreaks. Demolishing houses to save the city
was the only proven tactic against urban fires, but tearing
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down the homes of the wealthy without their permission carried
political risk. He delayed, and the fire gained a lead
that no human effort could close. By afternoon, whole streets
were alight and families were fleeing with whatever they could carry.
Carts jammed the lanes leading to the city gates on
the river, Boats ferried goods and passengers towards safety, crowded
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with barges piled high with furniture, crates, and even livestock.
By the night of September second, the fire had reached
the waterfront and threatened to consume the wharves and warehouses
along the river. These buildings were stocked with oil, timber, tar, sugar,
and spirits. When they caught, the blaze intensified into something
almost supernatural. Flames reflected off the water, and explosions rocked
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the banks as barrels and gunpowder stores ignited. Peppis, after
witnessing the scale of the destruction, hurried to Whitehall to
inform King Charles. The King grasped what the Lord Mayor
had not. This was now a national emergency. The fire
became a monster. The wind picked up and drove the
flames westward toward the very heart of the city. Whole
parishes disappeared in a single day. The roar of the
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fire was said to drown out bells and shouts. Smoke
blotted out the sun, leaving parts of the city in
an eerie twilight. This was the day the panic turned
to chaos. People dropped what they could not carry and
simply ran. Looting broke out in some areas. Rumors spread
faster than the fire itself. Stories of foreign saboteurs and
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papist plots fueled suspicion and anger. Desperate citizens pointed fingers
at strangers in the streets, and a few unlucky foreigners
were attacked by mobs. It was also the day that
gunpowder came into play. King Charles and his brother, the
Duke of York, took a direct hand in the fire
fighting effort. They ordered the creation of fire breaks by
any means necessary, including blasting houses apart with explosives. It
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was dangerous work, and it often came too late to
save the structures immediately behind the blasts. Still, it began
to slow the fire in some sectors. The King himself
was reportedly seen on horseback, encouraging workers and organizing demolitions.
His presence gave a sense of order to a city
that was otherwise dissolving into smoke and heat. On September fourth,
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the inferno reached its peak in drama and destruction Old
Saint Paul's Cathedral, the pride of London's skyline, became a victim.
The medieval cathedral had stood for centuries, its stone shell
thought to be impervious, but renovations had left wooden scaffolding
along the walls, and the interior was filled with combustible
materials from printers and booksellers who rented space inside. When
(11:35):
the fire reached it, the cathedral became a chimney. Flames
shot up its spire, and the lead roof melted, running
down the streets like liquid silver. John Evelyn, another diarist
and gentleman observer, called it a dismal yet astonishing sight.
The collapse of Saint Paul's was more than physical. It
was a psychological blow to londoner's a sign that nothing
(11:57):
was safe and the city's very soul was in peril.
By this point, over four fifths of the medieval city
within the walls was either burning or already reduced to ash.
Streets were unrecognizable. Heat warped iron gates and cracked stone.
The wind carried sparks as far as the countryside, where
farmers reported showers of ash. For four days, the fire
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devoured London, while the citizens lived in a nightmare of fleeing, watching,
and waiting. The fourth day, September fifth, brought a small
but crucial change. The wind began to die for the
first time since the disaster began. The fires advance slowed,
fire breaks, demolitions, and exhaustions started to work in tandem.
Soldiers and civilians dug in, pulling down buildings ahead of
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the flames and drenching walls with water. Without the wind
to feed its leaps and bounds, the fire lost its
most dangerous advantage. By September sixth, the Great Fire of
London was effectively under control. Small fires would smolder for days,
and the city still smelled of smoke and soaked timber,
but the main blaze had been stopped. In just four days,
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the fire had consumed roughly thirteen thousand houses, eighty seven churches,
the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall and the city's commercial lifeblood. Astonishingly,
official records counted relatively few deaths, though many historians suspect
that the true toll was higher. Fire left few remains
to count, and the poor were rarely recorded in the
first place. The psychological toll was immediate and deep. Survivors
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wandered streets of ash, unsure where their homes had been.
Landmarks were gone, the familiar map of London had been
wiped clean. People camped in the open fields outside the city,
watching columns of smoke and wondering if the city they
knew would ever exist again. Some wept for their possessions,
others for the sense that London itself had suffered a judgment.
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Sermons framed the fire as divine punishment, while secular authorities
looked for someone to blame. The Great Fire was not
the first urban disaster, but its speed and scale made
it unforgettable. It condensed centuries of urban growth into four
days of destruction. Eyewitnesses like Peppis and Evelyn gave posterity
the details the pigeons falling from the sky. The molten
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led the human tide of flight and fear. For the
people who lived through it. London had burned, like a
vision of the end of the world. What remained now
was ash anger and the impossible question of what to
do next. When the smoke finally cleared in September sixteen
sixty six, London looked like a city that had lost
a war. Four fifths of the old medieval center was gone.
(14:32):
Thirteen thousand homes had been destroyed, along with shops, warehouses,
and churches. The familiar skyline of spires and timbered gables
had been flattened into a smoldering plane. Where once there
were crooked lanes and market stalls, now there were chimneys
standing alone, scorched beams, and blackened stones. The air carried
the smell of wet ash and burned tallow. For weeks,
(14:54):
survivors moved through streets they no longer recognized, some weeping,
some silent, all stunned by the scale of the disaster.
The immediate aftermath was defined by dislocation. Tens of thousands
were homeless. Estimates vary, but roughly seventy thousand to eighty
thousand people out of a population of about eighty thousand
in the walled city were displaced. They fled to the
(15:18):
fields of Moorfields, Finsbury and Islington, where makeshift camps of
tents and wagons sprang up. Families who had spent the
fire clutching what they could carry, now huddled under the
open sky, surrounded by whatever they had saved, bedding, cooking pots,
the odd chest of clothing For the wealthy country estates
(15:39):
or the houses of relatives offered refuge for the poor.
It was an ordeal of exposure and hunger. The fire
had not killed as many as feared, but its aftermath
was a humanitarian crisis. Public anger began almost immediately. Londoners
wanted someone to blame. The destruction seemed too total, too
fast to be a simple accident. Whisper of sabotage spread quickly.
(16:01):
The city had been tense with xenophobia for years, fueled
by the Second Anglo Dutch War and long standing anti
Catholic sentiment. In the chaotic days after the fire, mobs
attacked foreigners, especially French and Dutch residents, accusing them of
setting the blaze as an act of war or conspiracy.
One frenchman carrying tennis balls was nearly torn apart because
(16:24):
the crowd insisted the balls were fire grenades. Authorities facing
a furious and homeless population, leaned into the search for scapegoats.
The official story settled on Robert Hubert, a French watchmaker
with a history of mental illness. Hubert confessed to starting
the fire, claiming he had thrown a fireball through the
window of the Pudding Lane bakery. His story was full
(16:46):
of holes. He had not even arrived in London until
after the fire began, But in a climate of fear
and anger, the truth mattered less than closure. Hubert was tried, convicted,
and hanged at Tyburn. Historians agree he was almost certainly innocent,
a man swept into the city's need to see someone punished.
Once the initial shock and violence subsided, the practical question loomed.
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How to rebuild London could not remain a field of
tents forever. King Charles the Second and his government recognized
both an opportunity and a challenge. The destruction had wiped
the slate clean in the city center. It was a
chance to modernize a medieval town that had been choking
on its own growth. But there were also pressing needs.
Merchants wanted to reopen their shops, citizens needed homes, The
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economy could not wait for grand designs. Within weeks, temporary
markets and wooden shacks were erected to allow trade to resume,
but the government also moved to establish new regulations to
prevent another catastrophe. Streets were to be widened. Overhanging timbered
upper stories, which had acted like ladders for the fire,
were banned in the core city. New construction had to
(17:55):
be in brick or stone. Even the simple act of
storing flammable materials in central London faced tighter control. Christopher Wren,
a brilliant young architect and scholar, stepped into history during
this period. He had already been involved in plans to
repair and improve Saint Paul's Cathedral before the fire, but
now he was part of a team envisioning a new London.
(18:17):
Wren's proposals were bold. He imagined broad boulevards, piazzas, and
a rational street grid, something closer to Paris than the
medieval tangle that had burned. But reality as usual imposed itself.
The speed of rebuilding and the complexity of property rights
made such sweeping change impossible. Landowners wanted their plots back quickly,
(18:38):
and most streets were rebuilt along their original paths. London
did not become the Baroque masterpiece Wren had dreamed, but
his influence was lasting. He would rebuild Saint Paul's as
a Renaissance style dome rather than a Gothic spire, giving
London a new and iconic skyline. The rebuilding was not
just architectural, it was financial. Fire created the first large
(19:01):
scale urban insurance market in English history. Nicholas Barbin, a
physician turned entrepreneur, saw opportunity and fear. He founded the
Fire Office, offering insurance policies to homeowners and businesses. Clients
received small metal plaques to nail to their houses, signaling
that their property was covered. These plaques, embossed with the
insurer's emblem, became an early and very visible symbol of
(19:23):
risk management. Out of ashes came an entire industry. Psychologically,
the fire left a complicated legacy. On one hand, it
ended a period of horror that had started with the plague.
In a dark twist, the fire helped cleanse the city
of the diseases, lingering hotspots, as the rats and fleas
that thrived in the old alleys were displaced or destroyed.
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On the other hand, it deepened London's sense of vulnerability.
A single spark had erased centuries of growth and memory.
Sermons framed it as divine punishment, warning the city to
remain humble and moral. Poets and diarists turned it into
story and symbol. Samuel Peppys's diary captured both the terror
and the absurdity, from the rivers choked with fleeing barges
(20:07):
to the molten lead flowing like deadly streams through the streets.
By the sixteen seventies, London was once again a functioning city,
though still scarred. New churches rose slowly. The new Saint
Paul's would not be completed until seventeen, ten decades after
the last ember had cooled. The memory of the fire, however, endured.
(20:27):
It lived in the new laws, in the wider streets,
and in the brick facades that replaced timber. It lingered
in the annual sermons and the tales told to anyone
who walked past the rebuilt Pudding Lane. Over time, the
Great Fire of London became part of the city's cultural identity.
It was a reminder of fragility and resilience, a story
of disaster that turned into renewal. School children learned the
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tale of the bakery spark that became an inferno. Tourists
came to see the monument, the tall column erected to
commemorate the event and to climate steps for a view
of the modern city that grew from fire and ash.
Writers from Daniel Dafoe to modern historians, found in the
fire a lesson about human error, urban planning, and the
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stubbornness of life. Why does this story endure? Partly because
it is dramatic, a medieval city, a single bakery, a
wind that would not quit, but also because it speaks
to something timeless. Cities are human creations, fragile in their
own ways. We build them as if they will last forever.
Yet history reminds us that all it takes is one night,
(21:32):
one spark, to turn permanence into memory. The Great Fire
of London is the story of a city humbled, then reborn,
and of the people who lived through the strange, smoky
days when the world they knew became a field of embers,
(22:00):
yem
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