Lauren W.

Birth Of Modern Europe

Of Fire, Fire Fire I sing,

that have more cause to cry,

In the Great Chamber of the King,

(a City mounted High);

Old London that,

Hath stood in State,

above six hundred years,

In six days space,

Woe and alas!

is burn’d and drown’d in tears.

The above poem describes London’s most terrific disaster known as the Great Fire of 1666. The fire began in a bakery on Pudding Lane early Sunday morning on September 2, 1666 and lasted for five days. In that time the fire destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 churches, 52 businesses and much more. The Great Fire only claimed the lives of six people, but left the city with an estimated damage total of ₤10 million. However, the fire of 1666 and the need for rebuilding forced the people of London to improve their construction methods and safety precautions to ensure that the city would be guarded against fire in the future.

London had been plagued with fires throughout its history, but none as great as the fire of 1666. The earliest fire that devastated the city occurred in 60AD when Queen Boudica and her troops from the Iceni tribe set fire to the area known as Londinium in that time. Roman troops invaded Britain in 43AD and established Londinium. They built the first London Bridge as a crossing of the Thames and set up a network of roads to other Roman territories. Londinium’s proximity to the Thames and its new bridge were responsible for the town’s population growth and its growth as an important trading post of the Roman Empire. The territory was built as a typical Roman possession with a castrum as the basis of the town’s street layout, a wall acting as the town’s border and defense against attack and a basilic

London also experienced severe fires in 1135 and 1212, but the level of destruction was nowhere near that of 1666. However, the cause of the spreading of the fires was the same, was the construction of the city’s buildings and its narrow streets. The majority of London’s houses were made of timber and "for the most part just a framework of posts covered with weather-boarding." These structures were in no way fireproof and the use of timber only made them more vulnerable to destruction by fire. However, orders were given to standardize how houses were constructed throughout London’s history. For example, in 1189 the Lord Mayor of London "ordered that houses must be of stone up to a certain height, and have their roofs covered with slate or tile," but no one followed the laws that were created to protect the city.

The people’s refusal to adhere to laws set up for their own safety contributed to the Great Fire of 1666. The fire spread to buildings surrounding the bakery and westward to the heart of the city due to the strong winds that the city had been experiencing for days prior to the fire. Samuel Pepys, a diarist made famous by his accounts of the fire in his diary, wrote on September 2^nd,

The wind was blowing strong eastwards, the flames at last reached Westminster; I myself saw great flakes carried up into the air at least three furlongs; these at last pitching upon and uniting themselves to various dry substances: set on fire houses very remote from each other in point of situation.

Pepys describes the fire’s ferocity and the ease with which it expanded. The fire rapidly extended throughout the city despite the efforts of the city’s fire fighters to extinguish it with their ladders, leather buckets and hooks on poles for pulling down burning timber houses. It was difficult for the fire fighters to put out the raging flames because the city’s streets were extremely narrow, which allowed the fire to move faster and limited the available space to maneuver through. The city’s primitive fire, which were no more than barrels mounted on wheels, were of little use because they frequently broke down or got stuck in alleys.

The fire continued to spread and rage, but on the night of Tuesday September 4^th the people of London witnessed the demolition of their most prized building, Old St. Paul’s. The cathedral was located in the southern section of the city and towered over everything in that area. Construction of the cathedral began in 1087 and adhered to the Norman architectural style with "a very long nave, a modest west front, transepts and a short choir with a semicircular apse." Its grand 245-foot high tower topped with a lead-covered timber spire was not added to the structure until 1221 and had a total height of 449 feet. In 1256 the Norman choir was razed and replaced with the New York, an English styled choirarm. With this addition, Old St. Paul’s was 585 feet long and was the largest cathedral in Europe until the construction of Seville and Milan.

Old St. Paul’s, much like London, had its own extensive history of fires and devastations. By 1666 the cathedral was in dire need of restoration despite Inigo Jones’s work to repair the decaying structure, which began in 1620 under James I. Dr. Christopher Wren, a master of Baroque style, was sent to survey the cathedral, but before he could make any plans for reconstruction, Old St. Paul’s burned to the ground from Tuesday September 4^th to the next morning. According to John Evelyn, another writer and diarist of the 17^th century,

The stones of Paul’s flew like grenados, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them, and the demolition had stopped all passages, so that no help could be applied.

Its stone walls were the only remains of the great cathedral.

The city continued to burn until Wednesday September 5^th and as a result, over 100,000 people were left homeless and much of London’s wealth was lost in the ashes. After all the flames had been extinguished, the city’s people turned their attentions towards rebuilding the four-fifths of the city that had been destroyed. Charles II and the city’s Mayor appointed a commission of six men to redesign London. Among those men was Dr. Christopher Wren, whose plan was thought to be grandiose yet practical, wanted to keep St. Paul’s and the Royal Exchange in their original locations. John Evelyn submitted a plan to Charles II as well, but his design consisted of six main streets and he wanted to move and rebuild the Royal Exchange on the riverfront. However, neither of their plans was executed, but 100 streets were widened and King street and Queen street were added to the city’s layout. Also, timber was banned as a construction material and the buildings that needed to be replaced were to be built with brick or stone.

By 1671 9,000 houses and several public buildings were finished. Christopher Wren began to rebuild on St. Paul’s cathedral in 1675 and worked on over 50 other churches. In 1666 London experienced its worse and most destructive catastrophe to date. The Great Fire forced the people of London and the government to reevaluate how they lived and worked. New means of fire prevention were established, such as an act passed in 1667, which divided the city into four quarters and required that each quarter possess 800 leather buckets, 50 ladders, 24 pickaxes and 40 shod shovels. As of September 5, 1666 medieval London, with its timber buildings and narrow streets no longer existed and the way was clear for the construction of a stronger, more practical, healthier, and safer city.

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