The Great Fire of London 2 September

On this day in 1666, a man called Thomas Farrinor, who was a baker to King Charles II and lived in Pudding Lane, in London retired for the evening. Some time, shortly after midnight, smouldering embers from the oven, which Farrinor had not properly extinguished earlier, set alight some nearby firewood. In London at that time, most buildings, including Farrinors bakery, were constructed of highly combustible materials like wood and straw and so a fire quickly took hold. Farrinor and his family managed to escape the burning building by climbing out through an upstairs window. The baker's housemaid failed to escape and was burned to death. A neighbour called Samuel Pepys was woken by the fire at around 1am.

Within an hour of the fire starting, the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, was woken with the news. He declared that "a woman might piss it out." Sadly, Sir Thomas was mistaken - the fire consumed a staggering 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, 6 chapels, 44 Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St Paul's Cathedral, the Guildhall, the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons, the Session House, four bridges across the rivers Thames and Fleet, and three city gates, and made homeless 100,000 people, one sixth of the city's inhabitants at that time. Incredibly only 16 people died.

A writer at the time said: "Then the city did shake indeed, and the inhabitants did tremble, and flew away in great amazement from their houses, lest the flames should devour them: rattle, rattle, rattle, was the noise which the fire struck upon the ear round about, as if there had been a thousand iron chariots beating upon the stones. You might see the houses tumble, tumble, tumble, from one end of the street to the other, with a great crash, leaving the foundations open to the view of the heavens."

It is beleived that the destructive fury of this fire was never exceeded in any part of the world, by any fire originating in an accident. Within the walls of the City, it consumed almost five-sixths of the whole city; and outside the walls it cleared a space nearly as extensive as the one-sixth part left unburnt within. Hardly a single building was left standing. Public buildings, churches, and houses - all gone.

2 September 1666 - The Great Fire of London.