Secrets of the Great Fire of London | ASMR History

[Music] hi everybody it's Margaret here from free tours by foot and today I want to take you back in time to 1666. it's just a little after midnight on the 2nd of September an unbeknownst to the residents of London a small fire has just begun in a bakery on pudding Lane the uncontrollable Blaze would soon sweep through the city demolishing nearly everything in its wake including the Beloved St Paul's Cathedral but this is a resilient City and London wood as ever Rise Again From the Ashes so come with me today and delve into chaos destruction and Devastation as well as the eventual resurrection of the city as we uncover the details of the Great Fire of London in 1666 London was by far the largest city in Britain and the third largest in the Western World with a population somewhere between 300 to 400 000 people the city was home to both the largest market and the busiest port in the country London was a thriving City with crowded streets lined with tall wooden houses and traffic clogged winding Lanes packed with people Goods wagons carriages and livestock the houses in the city were not only touching up their base with buildings sharing walls on either side the houses were almost touching at the top levels too each added story of a building would stick out further and further forward maximizing the space above the structure when there was very little of it on ground level the tears of the buildings would jut out so far that it would become possible to lean out of a top floor window and shake hands with the person in a top floor window across the street and these structures would in place is completely blocked the sun making the streets not only narrow and crowded but dark as well the shambles in York today gives us a glimpse of how London streets may have looked then in a time before electricity a largely wooden City relying on open flame for heat and light would be subject to the occasional fire and London was no exception in 1133 a large flagration destroyed almost all of the city between Saint Paul's Cathedral and Saint Clement Danes and in 1212 a fire that began in Southwick spread to London Bridge killing an estimated 3000 people who had become trapped on the bridge by Flames while trying to escape to the northern banks of the Thames note that through the centuries London Bridge was more like a street across the water rather than a bridge that we would imagine it as today built on top were dozens of houses at one point up to 140 of them as well as dozens of shops and even a chapel then in 1633 a fire broke out on London Bridge itself spreading to the northern edge of the water destroying 42 premises on the river crossing many of which were neither rebuilt nor replaced a strange decision that would prove massively fortuitous 33 years later as a result of these earlier fires there were precautionary measures in place in the capital to prevent further fire outbreaks in fact there were 1 000 Watchmen patrolling the city streets at night their sole purpose being to keep an eye out for fire if a fire was spotted church bells would be rung and the nearby citizens would emerge from their homes to help fight the blaze the idea being that this was a community problem at a time when houses were built touching one another a fire in a single home would quickly spread between houses so it was to the benefit of the local residents to help tackle the issue in addition every Parish church was required to hold a number of long ladders leather buckets axes and fire hooks the residents upon hearing the peeling of the Bells would run to the church to gather these items to help them fight the fire in 1661 King Charles II had banned the construction of new houses with overhanging floors in an effort to reduce the risk of fire passing from one side of the street to the other however this law was widely ignored by the government so too was his decree in 1665 that the narrow Lanes of the city proved such a fire risk that building should be demolished to make way for wider streets and he authorized the imprisonment of any Builder ignoring both of these requests this too however was entirely ignored seems strange that the people in control of London would so easily ignore messages threats and edicts from the reigning monarch but what we consider London today and what the people of 17th century London considered their Capital contains within it a separate City slightly larger than one square mile that operates entirely separately from the rest of London known as the city of London this area sits on the oldest part of town where the Roman settled over 2000 years ago it is its own City ceremonial County and government District the city of London has its own mayor its own police force and is considered to be the financial center of the United Kingdom if you'd like to know more about this area check out sinead's great virtual tour of the city of London which we'll link below for the purpose of our story today it's key to remember that the city of London was and still is self-governing in fact tradition states that the Monarch must ask for permission from the Lord mayor before bypassing the city walls to enter the area at the time of the great fire the relationship between the people here in the city of London and the crown wasn't a friendly one the city of London had sided with the parliamentarian Army against King Charles the first seen here and who happens to be the father of the King Charles II I've been talking about during the English Civil War the city's distaste for the King's father and the Republican sentiment shared by many of those in charge meant that the king's word meant very little to those managing the square mile their distrust and dislike of the crown would prove disastrous to the citizens of London aside from the structural and governmental stresses of the City by September of 1666 London had been enduring a rough time the Great Plague of London had been raging for well over a year and in a total span of 18 months an estimated 100 000 londoners a quarter of the City's population would die it was believed for some time that the Great Fire of London is what finally stopped the plague although historians today disagree with the claim and despite what the popular conception of the UK is the country does often have long hot and dry Summers such as the one of 1666. by September of that year London was hot dry sick and still crowded despite the loss of life it was as they say a recipe for disaster just after midnight on Sunday the 2nd of September in a bakery near this building here on pudding Lane Baker to the king Thomas feriner and his family were asleep in their rooms on the Upper Floor the family were awakened by smoke and quickly realized their Bakery was on fire trapped upstairs their only Escape was to climb out their window and into the house next door the family managed to do this but their maid was too afraid to climb out and remained in the house where she perished the first victim of the great fire in the interest of balance I will point out that Thomas denied the fire had begun in his Bakery until the very day he died fires were not uncommon and a fire burning in the 17th century oven like the one seen here not properly smored at the end of the day could easily spread but Thomas claimed his oven similar to the one seen here had been put out properly and that he had even extinguished it himself you can decide if you believe him or not but either way three hours after he claimed to have put the oven out his house was a blazing Inferno the neighbors from the adjoining houses that would have stood here all poured out onto the street and scrambled to help douse the fire approximately an hour later the authorities arrived and declared that the adjoining houses should immediately be demolished note that firefighting in the 17th century relied on two things water pumped from a machine like this one and demolition as depicted here it may surprise you to know that there was piped water available in the city center in the 1600s the supply was carried from the Thames and reservoirs in the north of London through town in a series of elm pipes which could be cracked open nearby in the event of Fire there were also rudimentary fire engines essentially large pumps set into barrels like the one seen here only some of which were on wheels that could be dispatched in case of fire as for demolition it was common practice to create fire Breaks by the destruction of buildings on either side of a blaze structures could be demolished with controlled gunpowder explosions torn apart by axes or by bands of people working together to control huge iron fire hooks like this one on display at the Museum of London so is the fire spread along pudding Lane the constables judged that the adjacent houses should be destroyed but the residents disagreed feeling that they would be able to put it out by means of water it was decided that the Lord mayor a man named Sir Thomas Bloodworth be summoned to come and make an executive decision by the time Bloodworth arrived the winds that would inceasingly blow for days had begun to pick up and the pudding lane fire had started to spread down here toward the waterfront on first glance that doesn't seem so bad the water would stop the fire unfortunately at that time the River Thames was lined with wharves wooden tenements and tar paper Shacks lived in by the poorest London residents an eyewitness later wrote that the area was nothing but quote Old Paper buildings and the most combustible matter of tar pitch hemp Rosen and flax in other words a powder cake and even literally two London was full of gunpowder especially in these Riverfront warehouses where ships would fill their stalks before heading out to sea there was also a significant amount of it stored in the homes of londoners left over from the stockpiles created during the Civil War the Lord mayor was immediately accosted as he arrived with experienced firemen shouting for the demolition to begin and the residents pleading otherwise adamant they just needed access to more water unfortunately for literally everyone Thomas Bloodworth was not a man of action contemporaries would describe him as quote a silly man and quote a very weak man and most brutally quote willing though be not very able to do great things if we want to be generous its possible Bloodworth was concerned that tearing down citizens homes could open him up to a legal claim from the residents and he wasn't to know that this fire would be unlike anything the city had ever seen before personally I'm disinclined to be generous to Thomas anyway when face to face with a sudden emergency in Pudding Lane he was well out of his element when pressed from both sides he crumbled declaring of the fire quote a woman could piss it out and after saying so he promptly went home the fire raged on and by 8 AM had spread to the water and halfway across London Bridge the citizens on the south side of the bridge and those in the heavily populated southwark area evacuated on Mass however with perhaps the only bit of luck in the entire great fire disaster the gaps in the houses on London Bridge here initially the public attempted to help fight the fire double chains of people from the banks of the Thames up to the burning streets handed buckets of water one to the other and back again for hours in an attempt to stop The Blaze but by mid-morning the increasing winds had stoked the flames and the fire continued to spread extinguishing efforts by the public were quickly abandoned as people rushed home to gather and preserve their belongings clogging the streets and preventing firemen from getting to the epicenter of The Blaze it wasn't uncommon for londoners during a fire to Simply take their valuables and walk across town waiting there for the fire to be put out some reports from the start of the fire tell of residents moving their belongings one step at a time further and further away as the fire spread before realizing the severity of the situation and finally attempting to leave London all together we know a great deal about the Great Fire of London because of a man called Samuel peeps he was a well-educated man who was both administrator of the royal Navy as well as a member of Parliament he kept an incredibly sometimes too detailed Diary of his life and he chronicled The Great Fire of London in real time when he was alerted to the fire on Sunday morning he rushed to the Tower of London where he could climb the battlements and get a good look of the scene he wrote that the quote Eastern Gale turned it into a conflagration less than 12 hours after it had begun more than 300 houses had burned to the ground and londoners were beginning to realize that this was no ordinary fire as for peeps he left the tower and went home he reported that the streets near the fire were littered with belongings people had dropped or deliberately Left Behind when it came to his own things he took his most expensive wine and his largest cheese and buried them both in his garden for safety he then had his other most valuable belongings carted off to bethnal Green now I love a man who has his priorities straight peeps then moved on toward pudding Lane itself to investigate the situation he wrote everybody was quote endeavoring to remove their goods and flinging into the river and quote 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 Waterside to another in the absence of leadership chaos had taken over in an attempt to gain some kind of control over the situation peeps sailed to the Palace of Whitehall to summon the King according to peeps Charles seemed quote much troubled he commanded peeps to return to the city find the Lord mayor and tell him to start pulling down houses to stop the spread of the fire he reiterated that no houses should be spared the king's brother James Duke of York offered the service of the royal lifeguards to the Lord mayor and asked peeps to send the message that the royal family would be sending men and supplies to combat The Blaze to bloodworth's credit when peeps returned to the city he found the Lord mayor near collapse aiding the firefighting efforts in response to the relayed message from the King that houses should be torn down Bloodworth cried that he was pulling down houses quote but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it when peeps also relay the offer of soldiers and assistants Bloodworth and other authority figures flat out refused The Echoes of the 1640s Civil War still in their minds the city of London authorities looked on the crown with suspicion and disdain and even in this most pressing of emergencies their minds would not be changed they wanted to give Charles no power in their City seemingly even at the cost of the city itself however the king would not be pushed away lightly he himself sailed down from Whitehall to inspect the scene discovering that despite his orders and bloodworth's response to peeps that he was pulling down houses were still not being systematically taken down Charles then brazenly overrode the authority of the city moving his soldiers in and ordering the complete demolition of the structures to the west of the current fire zone dangerous move to make one has to wonder if at the time Charles was thinking back on the fact that his father had literally lost his head for overstepping his boundaries King was correct in his efforts to order the destruction of buildings the close proximity of the structures had created a chimney effect sending hot air blazing through the streets and alleys like these spreading the fire with Incredible speed the parts of the place that had reached the Waterfront destroyed the water wheels rendering the water pipes in the city useless and despite the fact that numbers of fire engines were being wheeled or dragged through the streets they were having little effect too large to maneuver properly they struggled to get through the city some of them had fallen into the river while being filled and the ones that did make it to the edge of the fire were still essentially useless as the heat from the fire was so strong the firefighters couldn't get close enough to the Flames for the Pumped water to reach by Sunday evening the fire had already destroyed more than any other fire to hit the city in living memory centuries later archaeologists would find melted pieces of pottery which show that the fire was reaching temperatures as high as 1700 degrees Celsius and it was also completely and utterly out of control by the time Monday rolled around amidst the flames and the chaos rumors began to spread throughout the city today historians are generally in agreement that we can place the blame of the fire on Thomas verner's oven despite his protestations of course but at the time the fire was raging the people of London had begun to convince themselves that the fire had been deliberately set and perhaps by a foreign enemy The Heavy winds blowing on the capital were picking up Sparks spreading them throughout the city this meant that smaller fires began to erupt in other parts of the capital separate from the great Blaze itself not understanding this spread it seemed to many londoners that multiple people were involved starting multiple fires throughout the city at the time of the fire England was involved in a second anglo-dutch war and suspicious londoners began to place the blame of the fire on Dutch spies hidden in the city rumors of an imminent Dutch Invasion began to swirl there were third and fourth hand accounts of undercover agents running through the streets with matches and Hand Grenades throwing Fireballs into people's homes suspicion turned to panic and violence began to break out many of the king's soldiers had to turn their attention from firefighting to crowd control they began rescuing foreigners being attacked by Angry mobs only to occasionally arrest them after the fact they also began to mass arrest anybody deemed quote suspicious paranoia in the city was at a fever pitch in the days to come when the fire would die down the focus of people's suspicions fell not only on the Dutch but the French and in particular the Catholics the latter would seemingly be to blame for literal centuries after the fact although some believe the fire was not man-made but was divine having begun on pudding Lane and widely thought to have ended here on pie corner these words being an indication of London's sinful feasting gluttony and the fire a message from God against the cities over indulgence but by Monday afternoon the blame was firmly on foreigners turning London's neighbors against one another as for the man in charge of the city it appears that the Lord mayor had left from Sunday afternoon there exists no contemporary account of Bloodworth being anywhere near London in his absence the king placed his brother James in charge of operations in the city the Duke of York set up command posts all along the fire's perimeter and three member teams were put in charge of each post with instructions to demolish houses as they saw fit James and his lifeguards spent the entire day and evening on the streets not only managing the firefighting efforts but rescuing foreigners from mobs and attempting to bring a level of order back to the capital a witness later wrote quote the Duke of York have won the hearts of the people with his continual indefatigable pains day and night in helping to quench the fire unbelievably many londoners had still remained in the city through all this uncomprehending the severity of the situation however by Monday night citizens particularly the wealthy began evacuating the city in their droves this Mass Exodus created an opportunity for London's able-bodied poor who offered themselves as Porters to help the wealthy get their belongings out of the city taking money to carry or cart people's Goods into the rural areas outside London or just taking their belongings out of the city and off into the night never to be seen again in some cases anybody who owned a cart or a boat at this time was also turning a profit for example to hire a cart in 1660s London would cost a couple of Shillings but on the 3rd of September 1666 it cost 40 pounds that's the equivalent of 133 000 pounds today the river was packed with people trying to make a profit it's claimed that at some point there were so many boats in the water it was possible to walk across the Thames to southak the crowded River was one thing however and the crowded City another much of London was surrounded by a wall Roman in origin and then with medieval Editions getting in and out of the city required Passage through one of many gates in this wall but the people wagons carts and carriages all clamoring to get through the gates caused huge bottlenecks slowing people's Escape of the city into a crawl at one point the city of London magistrates ordered all the gates shut assuming that if the inhabitants of the city realize there was no way out they would be more likely to abandon their possessions and help put out the fire to save their lives rather than their goods yes really thankfully that idea didn't last long and as Monday turned into Tuesday the people of London continued to snake their way out of their burning City Tuesday the 4th of September would be the day of greatest destruction in the west of London the fire had been slowly headed toward the river Fleet along here the Duke of York had a command set up nearby with the idea being the river combined with the Demolition of the buildings along the banks would prevent the fire going any further west yet almost Beyond Comprehension the Flames aided by that strong wind jumped the river sending James's men scrambling in the center of London the fire finally breached cheap side here still a prominent Street in the city of London today in the 1600s cheapside was home to numerous luxury shops as well as homes of the wealthy all of which would be consumed by flames then the fire traveled along cheapside towards Saint Paul's Cathedral this actually wasn't a concern at the time however as Saint Paul's was considered a safe Refuge built with thick stone walls and surrounded by an open Piazza which created a fire break it was actually being used as an emergency Warehouse it was jam-packed with people's rescued goods and the city's most valuable objects the Crypt was filled to the brim with the stocks of the nearby printers and Bookseller shops on paternoster row however the cathedral was undergoing restoration work by Sir Christopher Wren and was covered in scaffolding wooden scaffolding she caught fire on Tuesday night within 30 minutes the lead roof had begun to melt into the church and all the paper goods in the Crypt were in Flames to the astonishment of those left in the city within mere hours Saint Paul's Cathedral was a gutted ruin and the east of the city the fire was traveling toward the Tower of London another seemingly safe Stone building however I mentioned to you that London was full of gunpowder and the majority of it was kept here at the tower it's estimated that 500 to 600 tons of gunpowder was stored at The Fortress in 1666 and the soldiers based there knew full well what would happen if the fire were to breached the walls Not only would the structure itself be destroyed but so would every valuable item inside and anybody unlucky enough to be nearby would be instantly killed the lack of authority and direction at the start of the fire had made people wisely decide to act on their own and without any permission the soldiers of the tower poured out of the Fortress and began to quickly demolish as many houses and shops around the structure as possible seeing the fairy gunpowder they were trying to protect the tower Garrison created a fire break around their base and successfully almost miraculously halted the fire in its tracks by Tuesday night it seemed that all of the city was either in Flames or was about to be but as Tuesday night turned into Wednesday morning it was hope rather than fire that began to spread the wind suddenly ceased preventing the Blaze from jumping past the dozens of fire breaks around the city and ever so very very slowly the fire began to burn out on Wednesday the 5th of September the Great Fire of London was officially declared over the dropping winds enabled the effectiveness of the fire breaks and although many parts of the city were still burning the blaze was now contained the last of the fire was reported as being put out here on pie corner at the northern reaches of the fire Zone close to Smithfield's Market the fire would take its time to completely disappear however it was reported two months after the fact that coal fires were still smoldering in the cellars under ruined houses throughout the epicenter of The Blaze Wednesday afternoon Samuel peeps again went for a bird's eye view of the city this time he climbed the steeple of All Hallows by the tower to survey the damage what he saw was quote the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw many londoners who had fled the city were now residing in camps on the outskirts of town some of the largest were in Islington and moorefields small green spaces are all that remain of these huge Fields today as crowded as London was so too were the camps one of which was here with families living cheek to jowl in makeshift tents and Shacks another 17th century diarist John Evelyn traveled to the camp in moorefields and wrote what he found there quote many without a rag or any necessary utensils bed or board reduced to extremist misery and poverty the miserable residents of these camps would routinely return to the city hoping to find any remaining possessions amongst the Ash and Rubble mood in the camps was grim and increasingly tense on Wednesday evening there was mass panic in the camps as a light in the sky over Fleet Street was spotted and rumors swirled that 50 000 French and Dutch soldiers were marching towards the camps to kill the inhabitants and steal their meager supplies the frightened campers turned on any foreigners they happened to come across and any non-english person was physically removed from the camps pushed back out into the fields by not only members of the camps but the authorities as well the lack of food and drink helped matters none food production had for all intents and purposes stopped and the situation became so volatile that the king feared the people may very well turn their ire onto the crown Charles decreed that markets be immediately constructed around the perimeter of the city and that supplies of bread should be brought in Daily for the hungry refugees Saturday the markets were in operation and efforts to clear away the debris in the city had begun Aid came from abroad as well King Charles II's cousin Louis XIV check out the family resemblance offered to send food and any Goods that might be needed to help support the population of London he also insisted that despite France and England's continued adversarial relationship he would not quote have any rejoicings about it although in private he did consider quote the Fire of London as a stroke of Good Fortune as all of England's time money and attention was now focused on London leaving the English Channel free for his French Fleet as the days in the camps turn to weeks those who could leave did it's estimated that the fire displaced close to 200 000 people many of whom would never return to the capital the king encouraged those in the camps to move away if they could and issued a proclamation that quote all cities and towns whatsoever shall without any contradiction receive the said distressed persons and permit them the free exercise of their manual trades he also banned the talk of quote rumors and tumults and began a nationwide charitable trust specifically to support the fire victims the London Gazette reported to all that the fire had been an accident and quote it stressed the role of God in starting the flames and of the king and helping stem them Charles had it seemed managed to win the favor of the city's Residence at last however not everybody was able or willing to pack up and go and few had anywhere or anyone else to turn to so they remained in the camps in some cases they would live there for years when looking at the destructive impact of the fire there are two things to focus on the loss of life and material destruction it's widely believed that one heavily outweighs the other firstly there is one confirmed death worth mentioning that of a quote simple-minded man named Robert Hubert in October Robert publicly claimed he was a French spy who had begun the fire by walking down here to pudding Lane and throwing a grenade into Thomas farner's Bakery window he claimed he was one of a ring of men responsible for the Blaze and he was put on trial despite the fact that Robert had not even arrived in London until two days after the fire had begun and that Thomas farner's Bakery had no window and that the majority of the jury didn't believe anything he said Robert was convicted it seems the government wouldn't give up a willing scapegoat and in an effort to calm the rumors and unrest in the city ordered Robert's execution at tyburn on the 27th of October 1666 terms of official records few deaths attributed to the Great Fire of London have been recorded and it's traditionally said that the death toll was in single digits contemporary newspapers like the London Gazette did not record a single fatality many historians believe that it's likely the death toll was in the double digits but not higher their argument being that had there been a significant loss of life that would have been reflected in contemporary accounts petitions for charity and official Publications but there are some who strongly disagree they argue that The Heat Of The Firestorm could have been so high it's possible it fully consumed the bodies of the victims leaving no Trace behind also they note that official records would say little about the poorest residents and those who are undocumented it was noted that there were vast outbreaks of mob violence so many deaths could have occurred at the hands of panicked residents add to this the miserable and unsanitary conditions of the refugee camps there were numerous known deaths from hunger and exposure in the camps and the argument is that these should be included in the final death toll figure when recounting the great fire when it comes to matters material however there is no disagreement The Great Fire of London destroyed nearly 80 percent of the city including around 13 400 houses over 85 churches 44 accompany Halls the Royal exchange the custom house Bridewell Palace the city prisons and Saint Paul's Cathedral the Carnage covered a total area of 426 acres and as many as seventy thousand people were left completely homeless the monetary value of all that was lost in the fire was put at 10 million pounds the equivalent of 1.79 billion today were some lucky and rare survivals though which still stand today such as the Tower of London saved by that fast-acting Garrison Henry's room included on our city of London tour linked below which was one of the few wooden buildings in the city to predate the fire having been built in 1610. Saint Bartholomew's Gatehouse dating from 1595 which you can see on our Dark Side of London tour and in our ghosts and gruesome past video both linked below and All Hallows by the tower which claims to be the oldest church in the city of London now having survived both the great fire and the Blitz in the 20th century the Reconstruction of London was not straightforward there were massive disputes between landlords and tenants about who should pay for the rebuilding of structures special fire courts had to be set up from early 1667 to the end of 1668 to weigh in and officially lay the responsibility on one side or the other fire Court was set up in 1670 until 1676 to help enforce the rebuilding of London act which had been passed in 1670 which officially gave the responsibility of rebuilding to the party who had the greater ability to pay this may seem arduous but all judgments were given within the space of one day to keep three building of the city running at a steady pace economic recovery however was slow for the majority of London business owners the fire had not only destroyed their premises but their stock and goods as well many Merchants feeling unable to wait for the rebuilding of the city took their trades and settled elsewhere leaving huge vacancies and various goods and services for those who stayed behind strictly through the money trade and employment brought in by the city's access to shipping routes which luckily hadn't been entirely thwarted by The Blaze that the capital was able to financially recover piece by piece over the next decade eventually reclaiming its role as a preeminent economic hub as for the Reconstruction of the city itself there were numerous plans to create new modern city layouts Architects such as Christopher Wren and government officials like John Evelyn worked hard to create blueprints for the relaying of a new city Ren based his design on Paris likewise the victim of a destructive fire and attempted to implement a grid system the latest innovation in Urban Design major flaw in these designs is that boundary lines would have needed to be redrawn and evaluated on a case-by-case basis and the shortage of Labor as well as the desire of most londoners to just get back to normal as soon as possible this wasn't a realistic process instead the city was mostly rebuilt on its original medieval plan which still lasts in many parts of the square mile like here at the wine office Court home to the iconic the old Cheshire Cheese Pub a feature in a few of our tours linked below or here a long Charming love it Lane but there were changes and largely positive ones too efforts were made to not only ensure that a fire on this level could never break out again but to prepare for the situation in case one eventually did this led to improvements in fire safety such as wider streets open warehouses and the Banning of constructions that would block access to the Thames and above all else a decree that buildings should be constructed of brick and stone only the act that is perhaps largely responsible for the absence of any subsequent City destroying Inferno the emergence of the first insurance companies in the city came about and incentives were offered to clients who took fire prevention methods and discounts were given to those in brick buildings like these on Bow Lane as opposed to those still living in wooden housing both parish and private firefighting organizations were formed which would eventually lead to odd scenarios wherein a house could be on fire but the nearest fire brigade would simply ignore it if the house had a contract with a different firefighting service organization events such as that would eventually lead to the creation of the London fire brigade In 1832 showing the ramifications of the Great Fire of London rippled well into the following centuries by 1671 the majority of the rebuilding of the city was largely complete and around that time work began on the monument to the Great Fire of London at the request of the king Architects Robert Hook and Christopher Wren designed a monument to be placed in Pudding Lane to commemorate the great fire the Doric stone column measures 202 feet or 61.5 meters tall and it's said that if you were to tip the monument onto its side the top of it would touch the spot on pudding Lane where the fire is thought to have begun the top of the column is crowned with a shining gilded urn of fire widely thought by many to look like a flaming pudding the four sides of the base of the monument are decorated with various words and images this side of the base depicts a relief sculpture of the destruction of London with King Charles II and his brother Future King James II surrounded by figures depicting Liberty architecture and science leading the charge to save and restore the capital the South Side describes the heroic actions taken by the king to help stop the fire the East describes the construction of the monument and the north side describes how the fire began the damage it wrought and how it was eventually put out the texts on The Monument's base have had some editing over the years however in 1681 a sentence was added blaming Catholics for the fire it read quote but popeish frenzy which wrought such Horrors is not yet quenched and quote burning of this Protestant City begun and carried out by the treacherian malice of the popish faction thankfully in line with the Catholic emancipation in 1830 these accusations were removed the column is accessible to the public although there's over 300 steps to take to reach the top today there's a cage surrounding the viewing gallery which was only added in 1842 after a Spate of people jumping to their deaths from the top behind the monument stands pudding Lane a small plaque marking the former spot of Thomas farner's Bakery the plaque was erected in 1986 on this unfortunate looking Construction as in that year London's Bakers formally apologized to the Lord mayor for starting the great fire the plaque not only commemorates the event but acknowledges that it was begun by a baker I think we know how Thomas ferner would feel about that a smaller but still Charming Monument stands on the corner of Guildford Street and Lane in Smithfield the statue of a small Golden Boy who previously had wings marks the spot where the great fire is said to have finally stopped the wooden figure gilded in Gold stands above a description which blamed the great fire on London's gluttony hence the figure is rather corpulent appear in The Great Fire of London was a socially and economically devastating event and it's easy to imagine the sheer Terror and horror felt by those who were witness to its destruction but even before the great fire in 1666 London had already burned down multiple times including its complete destruction by Queen boudica in 60 A.D and the city would again face similar levels of Devastation during the Blitz and yet here it still stands untroubled and unfazed by the tragedies of the past the city keeps on keeping on unwavering and indefatigable in its evolution londoners walk along streets that have seen Untold levels of Destruction and death without ever giving it a second thought and now you know the truth of what history lurks under your feet as you tread the streets of the city of London and The Monuments that remain in the square mile ensure that the history of the great fire will never be forgotten thanks again for joining me and as ever I'll see you again in another point in time

Channel: Free Tours by Foot - London

Views: 15,801

Keywords: London, vlog, tour, virtualtour, history, walking tour, cityoflondon, great fire, greatfireoflondon, 1666, the monument, christopherwren, documentary

Id: yN9R2MmvVNI

Length: 46min 10sec (2770 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 26 2023