19/08/2026
At around 1 am to 2 am on September 2, 1666, a fire began in a London bakery and for four days, most of the medieval City of London would have been in ruins. The great fire of London began at Thomas Farriner’s bakery on Pudding Lane, near London Bridge, embers from the bakery oven are believed to have ignited nearby combustible material, creating a fire. Farriner escaped with his family through an upper window, in the bakery but unfortunately his maidservant died and the flames were just getting started. London was basically a firetrap at the time because timber houses stood tightly packed along narrow streets with buildings were covered in pitch or tar, and to add to this trap is the long dry summer and a powerful easterly wind that was pushing sparks from roof to roof. To make thing worse the flames reached the riverside warehouses, packed with oil, tallow, spirits, coal and other combustible goods, which finally led to the fire exploding across the city. There was no modern fire brigad at the time so Citizens and soldiers were left to fight the fire with leather buckets, hand pumps and firehooks. They tried pulling down buildings to create firebreaks but the flames were moving faster than they could organise. Even King Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, personally had to enter the city to help with direct the response. Of all the days the fire burned, tuesday was the worst day. The Royal Exchange, Guildhall and countless streets were destroyed and eventually reaching St Paul’s Cathedral. As London burned, rumours spread that the French and Dutch had deliberately started the fire, leading to the arrest of Foreigners, but the official account eventually rejected the conspiracy theory, attributing the disaster to an accident, the wind and London’s combustible construction. Gunpowder became a desperate solution to stop the fire, buildings were blown up to create massive firebreaks and the wind finally weakened. By September 5, the fire was largely under control and by 6th, it was finally extinguished. Around 13,200 houses were destroyed, with thousands rendered homeless, but London rose from the ashes. Brick and stone replaced much of the timber construction, the Streets became wider and Churches were rebuilt, with Christopher Wren commissioned to designed the new St Paul’s Cathedral. Mind blowing how just a small fire from a bakery could changed the architecture of a city forever.
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