Great Fire of London (1666): How the City Burned and Rebuilt

The Great Fire of London burned from 2 to 6 September 1666 and destroyed most of the medieval City of London, the historic core inside the old Roman and medieval walls. Starting in a bakery in Pudding Lane, it consumed around 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches and the old St Paul’s Cathedral. The disaster left tens of thousands homeless, but it also led to a new city of brick and stone and to some of Sir Christopher Wren’s greatest buildings.

Background

In 1666 London was one of the largest cities in Europe, with a population commonly estimated at around 400,000 to 500,000 across the City and its suburbs. The City itself was crowded with narrow streets and timber-framed houses, many with overhanging upper storeys that almost touched across the lanes. Warehouses along the Thames were packed with flammable goods such as pitch, tallow, oil and coal.

The city was still recovering from the Great Plague of 1665, the last major outbreak in England of the bubonic plague first brought by the Black Death. England was also at war with the Dutch Republic. The summer of 1666 had been long and dry, and firefighting relied on leather buckets, hand-operated squirts and hooks for pulling down buildings.

Fire was a constant danger in early modern cities, and London had suffered serious blazes before, including one on London Bridge in 1633. Building regulations calling for brick and stone already existed, but they were widely ignored because timber was cheaper. Bakers, brewers and other trades that used ovens and furnaces worked side by side with homes in the same narrow streets.

The war with the Dutch had also raised tension. In August 1666 an English fleet had burned around 150 Dutch merchant ships and the town of West-Terschelling, a raid known as Holmes’s Bonfire. Many Londoners feared revenge, and foreigners living in the city were viewed with suspicion.

How the fire spread

The fire broke out shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September in the bakery of Thomas Farriner, baker to the King, in Pudding Lane. Farriner and his family escaped through an upper window, though a maidservant died. A strong wind from the east drove the flames towards the riverside warehouses and then westward into the heart of the City.

The Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, was called in the night but did not think the fire serious and hesitated to order houses pulled down to make firebreaks. By the time decisive action was taken, the blaze was too large to contain. The diarist Samuel Pepys, a naval official, watched it from the river and went to Whitehall to tell King Charles II, who ordered that houses be demolished in its path.

Over Monday and Tuesday the fire reached its height. The Royal Exchange, the Guildhall and dozens of livery company halls were destroyed. On the night of Tuesday 4 September, St Paul’s Cathedral caught fire; its roof lead melted and ran into the streets. Pepys famously buried his wine and a parmesan cheese in his garden to protect them.

Booksellers around St Paul’s had carried their stock into St Faith’s, the church in the cathedral’s crypt, believing it would be safe there. When the cathedral burned, books and papers worth a fortune were destroyed. All through the crisis, streets and the river were crowded with people trying to save their belongings in carts and boats, and the prices charged for carrying goods rose steeply.

As the fire died down, tens of thousands of homeless people gathered in the fields outside the walls. The King rode out to Moorfields to reassure them, ordered food to be supplied and encouraged other towns to take in refugees. The authorities feared riots as much as fire, and the rumours of foreign arson made the danger real.

Fighting the fire

Charles II placed his brother James, Duke of York, in charge of the firefighting. James organised soldiers and fire posts and was seen working among the crowds. Crucially, the authorities began using gunpowder to blow up houses and create wider firebreaks, which helped protect the Tower of London.

On Wednesday 5 September the east wind dropped. The firebreaks began to hold, and the fire was largely brought under control, finally stopping at points such as Temple, Fetter Lane and Pie Corner near Smithfield. Small outbreaks continued for days afterwards.

Key people

Thomas Farriner ran the bakery where the fire began. He always denied that he had left his oven burning, but the fire almost certainly started on his premises. Sir Thomas Bloodworth, the Lord Mayor, is remembered for reportedly dismissing the early blaze as too small to worry about. His reluctance to pull down houses without the owners’ consent cost valuable hours.

Charles II, restored to the throne only six years earlier in the Restoration of 1660, and his brother James, Duke of York, the future James II, won praise for their personal role. Contemporary accounts describe both men helping the firefighters and handing out money to encourage them.

Two diarists gave the fullest eyewitness record. Samuel Pepys, a senior official of the Navy Board, described the flames, the panic and the people carrying their goods to the river. John Evelyn, a writer and gardener, recorded the ruins of St Paul’s and the homeless crowds in the fields.

After the fire, Christopher Wren and the scientist Robert Hooke, who served as one of the City’s surveyors, became the leading figures of the rebuilding.

Timeline

• 1666, 2 September (early hours): Fire breaks out in Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane.
• 1666, 2 September: Samuel Pepys reports the fire to Charles II, who orders houses pulled down.
• 1666, 3 September: The fire spreads west; the Royal Exchange is destroyed and James, Duke of York, takes charge.
• 1666, 4 September: St Paul’s Cathedral is engulfed; gunpowder is used to create firebreaks.
• 1666, 5 September: The wind drops and the fire is largely brought under control.
• 1666, October: Robert Hubert, a French watchmaker, is hanged after falsely confessing to starting the fire.
• 1667, February: The Rebuilding Act sets rules for building in brick and stone.
• 1677: The Monument to the Great Fire is completed near Pudding Lane.

Aftermath and rebuilding

The fire destroyed an estimated 373 acres inside the city walls, around four-fifths of the walled City. Roughly 70,000 to 80,000 people lost their homes, and many camped in the open fields to the north, at places such as Moorfields. Only six deaths were officially recorded, though historians generally think the true figure was higher.

Rumours blamed foreigners and Catholics, and some were attacked in the streets. A parliamentary inquiry concluded that the fire was an accident. Robert Hubert’s confession was widely doubted even at the time, as evidence suggested he had not been in London when the fire began.

Several ambitious plans were drawn up for a new city of broad avenues, including one by Christopher Wren, but none was adopted, mainly because of complex property rights. The City was rebuilt largely on its old street plan, but the Rebuilding Act required brick or stone construction and wider streets. Wren designed the new St Paul’s Cathedral, declared complete in 1711, and 51 City churches. He and Robert Hooke designed the Monument, a column 202 feet (about 61 metres) tall, standing 202 feet from the site of the bakery.

Rebuilding raised difficult legal questions, because leases and property boundaries had literally gone up in smoke. A special Fire Court, set up in 1667, settled thousands of disputes between landlords and tenants quickly and cheaply. The Rebuilding Act defined a small number of standard house types, with fixed storey heights and wall thicknesses depending on the width of the street. Public buildings, the new churches and St Paul’s were paid for largely by a tax on coal brought into London.

By the early 1670s much of the housing had been rebuilt, although the churches and the cathedral took decades longer. Many wealthier residents never returned, moving instead to the growing West End, which helped change the shape of London.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: the fire wiped out the plague. The Great Plague was already fading by 1666, and the fire destroyed mainly the walled City rather than the crowded suburbs, such as Southwark and the eastern parishes, where plague had been worst. Historians now see the fire’s role in ending plague in London as small at most.

Myth: almost nobody died. The figure of six deaths comes from official records. Many poor and unregistered people lived in the City, and the intense heat could have left little trace of victims, so the real toll was probably higher, although no reliable estimate exists.

Myth: the fire was a plot. At the time many blamed Catholics or foreign agents, and in 1681 an inscription blaming Catholics was added to the Monument. Investigations found no plot, and the inscription was finally removed in 1830.

Why it matters

The Great Fire transformed London’s appearance and building practices, making the city far less vulnerable to fire. It encouraged the growth of fire insurance, with the first fire insurance offices appearing in London in the 1680s. Later urban disasters such as the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 followed a similar pattern of destruction followed by rebuilding in more fire-resistant materials. Through the vivid diaries of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, it also became one of the best-documented disasters of the seventeenth century.