The Great Fire of London

The Great Fire of LondonThe fire started in the morning, 2nd of September 1666. It happened at the bakery of Thomas Farriner on Pudding Lane (a street in the city of London). Thomas Farriner was the court-baker for Karl II, and presumably the fire started because he forgot to turn off the oven, before he went to bed, the evening before. At some point after midnight the glows, from the furnace, set fire to burn located next to it. Farriner and his family managed to get away, but unfortunately their maid was the first victim of the fire. Thomas Bloodworth, Lord Mayor of London, was awakened an hour after the beginning of the fire. He wasn’t worried, and was reported to have said “a woman could piss it out”, and as he didn’t give the order to demolish houses without the owners' consent, there were no firebreaks to prevent the fire from quickly spreading. You couldn’t put out the fire with buckets, because of the extent of the fire, so the fire spread in no time. The buildings in London were at that time was made of combustible materials, for example wood and straws, and the houses were very close, so as soon as the flames had taken hold, there was nothing to be done. There was also a strong wind from the east that morning, so that was another benefit for the fire to spread fast. It was a terrible fire and it was a huge defeat for London. Among other the fire destroyed 13.200 houses, 87 churches, 6 chapels, 4 bridges over the river Thames and Fleet, 3 gates and one-sixth of the city's inhabitants (100.000 people) became homeless. A strange fact about the fire is that the number of people dead is unknown. Today, there have been theories about that thousands of people died in the fire, but after the fire in 1666 it was announced that between nine and sixteen people died. Back then there was not an effective census, so it is not inconceivable that the death toll was higher. But also if a whole family died, and they for example were poor, than they wouldn’t be missed. The economic losses estimated at least ten million pounds; in present value is dealing with billions. But someone had to clean up after the fire, and since the city has the property that it’s London capital it also had to be rebuilt, and that was a job for the architect Christopher Wren. His first idea was to make the city modern with bricks, stones, squares and boulevards but you found out that the basements was persevered, and that there were disputes about ownership, so his plan didn’t work. But in 1667 the parliament sourced money to the rebuilt, so the old plan was back on track, and that is actually why London today appears as a modern city, but with a medieval streetplan. Christopher Wren also rebuilt St. Paul’s Cathedral, which also was destroyed in the fire, and that took him 11 years. St. Paul’s Cathedral is also where he now lies buried.