[63], An example of the urge to identify scapegoats for the fire is the acceptance of the confession of a simple-minded French watchmaker named Robert Hubert, who claimed that he was an agent of the Pope and had started the Great Fire in Westminster. The fire's spread to the north reached the financial heart of the City. These parishes contained workplaces, many of which were fire hazards—foundries, smithies, glaziers—which were technically illegal in the City but tolerated in practice. Several observers emphasise the despair and helplessness which seemed to seize Londoners on this second day, and the lack of efforts to save the wealthy, fashionable districts which were now menaced by the flames, such as the Royal Exchange—combined bourse and shopping centre – and the opulent consumer goods shops in Cheapside. However, early on Tuesday morning, the flames jumped over the Fleet and outflanked them, driven by the unabated easterly gale, forcing them to run for it. The Great Fire off London Did you know that the Great Fire of London of September 1666 was one of the most famous incidents in Stuart England. They seemed much troubled, and the King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him and command him to spare no houses, but to pull down before the fire every way." By law, the tower of every parish church had to hold equipment for these efforts: long ladders, leather buckets, axes, and "firehooks" for pulling down buildings (illustration right; see also pike pole). Cases were heard and a verdict usually given within a day; without the Fire Court, lengthy legal wrangles would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was so necessary if London was to recover. [2] It destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, St Paul's Cathedral, and most of the buildings of the City authorities. Surging into the streets, the frightened mob fell on any foreigners whom they happened to encounter, and were pushed back into the fields by the Trained Bands, troops of Life Guards, and members of the court. The incident involved flames exploding around the world, devastating it and leaving most parts of the planet uninhabitable.1 Continents were torn apart and some nations were utterly obliterated. [12], The relationship between the City and the Crown was often tense. The Great Fire of 1871 was one of most colossal disasters in American history. Louis XIV of France offered to help. [28][29] It was often possible to open a pipe near a burning building and connect it to a hose to spray on a fire or fill buckets. Fear and suspicion hardened into certainty on Monday, as reports circulated of imminent invasion and of foreign undercover agents seen casting "fireballs" into houses, or caught with hand grenades or matches. The chaos at the gates was such that the magistrates briefly ordered the gates shut, in the hope of turning the inhabitants' attention from safeguarding their own possessions to fighting the fire: "that, no hopes of saving any things left, they might have more desperately endeavoured the quenching of the fire. Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. [16] The only major stone-built area was the wealthy centre of the City, where the mansions of the merchants and brokers stood on spacious lots, surrounded by an inner ring of overcrowded poorer parishes whose every inch of building space was used to accommodate the rapidly growing population. Contemporary maps record the site as 23 Pudding Lane. During the first couple of days, few people had any notion of fleeing the burning City altogether. [37], When Bloodworth arrived, the flames were consuming the adjoining houses and creeping towards the warehouses and flammable stores on the riverfront. [1] The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall. It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into squalid extramural slums such as Shoreditch, Holborn, and Southwark, and had reached far enough to include the independent City of Westminster. The swirling winds carried sparks and burning flakes long distances to lodge on thatched roofs and in wooden gutters, causing seemingly unrelated house fires to break out far from their source and giving rise to rumours that fresh fires were being set on purpose. – “If you seek his monument, look round”. Norman, Derek, Sarah, James, and Dilys go pioneering with Trevor Evans in the forest. He took a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range and describes a "lamentable" fire, "everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another." The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of London from Sunday, 2 September to Thursday, 6 September 1666. It destroyed a large part of the City of London, including most of the civic buildings, old St. Paul’s Cathedral, 87 parish churches, and about 13,000 houses. [38] After the City had been destroyed, Samuel Pepys looked back on the events and wrote in his diary on 7 September 1666: "People do all the world over cry out of the simplicity [the stupidity] of my Lord Mayor in general; and more particularly in this business of the fire, laying it all upon him. [19] The ship chandlers along the wharves also held large stocks, stored in wooden barrels. The City was essentially medieval in its street plan, an overcrowded warren of narrow, winding, cobbled alleys. The houses on London Bridge were burning. [45] The spread to the south was mostly halted by the river, but it had torched the houses on London Bridge and was threatening to cross the bridge and endanger the borough of Southwark on the south bank of the river. The Great Fire of 1871 was one of most colossal disasters in American history. [57], Pepys visited Moorfields, a large public park immediately north of the City, and saw a great encampment of homeless refugees, "poor wretches carrying their good there, and every body keeping his goods together by themselves".