Cities and disaster
The Great Fire of London 1666
What happened?
Early on Sunday morning, 2 September 1666, a fire started in a bakery in Pudding Lane in the City, which raged for four days and nights. The diarist Samuel Pepys, who reported the fire to Charles II, buried a valuable Parmesan cheese before abandoning his house to the flames.
Charles put his brother, the duke of York, in control of fighting the fire. As well as posting guards to prevent looting, the duke ordered gunpowder explosions to create firebreaks. These eventually stopped the fire in the east of the City, but when it jumped the River Fleet in the west, it threatened Whitehall with its royal palaces. Only the dropping of the wind saved them.
What was the cost?
The Great Fire consumed nearly 400 acres within the City's walls and 63 acres outside them, as well as 87 churches (including Old St Paul’s Cathedral), 44 livery halls and 13,200 houses – at what was then the enormous cost of £10 million. In addition, some 200,000 people were left destitute. However, only five deaths were recorded.
What was the disaster’s legacy?
The character of London changed dramatically. Wooden buildings virtually disappeared and were replaced by those of stone and brick. Although the medieval street layout remained more or less in place because of problems with altering existing property borders, some streets were widened. Christopher Wren was commissioned to design and build 51 churches of classical design in place of the destroyed medieval ones, as well as the new – and radical – St Paul’s Cathedral.
Many of the workers needed for all this came from outside of London and eventually settled there. Against the trend elsewhere in Europe, the city’s population rose, and the social demarcations that persist today began to be formed: the City for business, the West End for the wealthy and for shops and the East End for the poor.
The experience of the fire led to two major innovations: fire insurance and fire brigades.
For more on this disaster, see Channel 4’s Fire website.
