The Great Fire Of London: Who Really Caused The Flames? | The Great Fire | Absolute History

[Music] london one of the busiest cities in the world but if i'd been here in september 1666 i'd have been walking through the heart of a terrible inferno surrounded by chaos and panic the capital was in flames 350 years ago the great fire raged for four days and nights the streets below us would have been a scene of utter carnage as nearly all the buildings in the city of london were destroyed in our last program we investigated the start of the fire and with the help of some new research we found precisely where the bakery was where it all began exactly here and that is quite amazing this time we'll be following the trail of devastation as the blade spreads even further claiming all the important buildings in the city nearly a thousand homes and shops were destroyed on day one of the fire but on days two and three there was much worse to follow i'll be walking the route of the great fire on its second and third days finding out how people fought to stop it every step of the way oh wow look at them go new research will uncover how the flames were able to spring up like wildfire all over london oh there we go now we've got fire we'll see how londoners turned against each other looking for someone to blame they really are the bakers from hell aren't they and underground i discover the lost remains of saint paul's from 1666 we can see something no one gets a chance to see the pillars of medieval samples this is the great fire the fire began in the pudding lane area in the early hours of sunday september the second 1666 and quickly spread south devouring the poorer areas and the keysight but now on monday the second day of the fire it's moving here towards grace church street one of the most glamorous parts of the city grace church street is wiped out within a few hours and the fire keeps heading north towards the heart of the financial district lombard street and the royal exchange if they go up in flames london's economy is in serious trouble [Music] susanna and rob are exploring how londoners from every walk of life were caught up in the flames people are in a state of panic the city's in chaos and here at newgate one of the seven london gates leading in and out of the city there are huge bottlenecks as people desperately attempt to flee the inferno early on monday all entrances to the city are closed to incoming traffic to help more people to escape as it spreads the fire makes no allowance for class or wealth everyone rich or poor is under threat across the series i'm following three londoners a bookseller a shoemaker and a banker all living in different parts of this great city on monday early afternoon the flames are reaching wealthy lombard street and our first londoner is now being caught up in the raging fire the narrow twisting road made it easy for the fire to burn towards his elegant residence robert weiner was a wealthy banker and goldsmith and one of the most influential men in england friends with the king he even made some of the famous crown jewels his home was now in serious danger weiner ever the cautious banker took action 24 hours before the fire reached his house in lombard street he had his business papers jewelry and cash moved out of his house and taken to be stored over 20 miles away at the king's palace at windsor castle in a terrifying couple of hours viner lost his home business and his entire neighborhood the only comfort was knowing that at least his family was safe he also managed to save his jewels and his documents holding details of the many debtors who owed him money but the great fire wasn't done with him yet rich londoners like robert weiner had the most to lose but they also had the cash to pay other people to get their stuff out of harm's way and not everyone was that lucky poorer people just had to grab whatever they could in their arms or stick it on a cart and flee it would have been absolute chaos people running in every direction trying to save themselves trying to save their belongings as behind them the fire spread remorselessly swallowing up homes and swallowing up businesses north of lombard street just seven streets away from where the fire started was the financial and commercial heart of london the royal exchange now in a matter of moments it too was consumed by the fire and 3 000 merchants selling everything from chinese silks to gold cloth and jewels had their livelihoods destroyed for a while a strange and exotic smell is rising up from the crypt here and that's because this is where the east india company keeps its huge stocks of very expensive spices and that smell which is sticking to the back of people's throats well that's all of their pepper burning i want to know why the destruction of the royal exchange on monday afternoon was such a devastating blow for the city so i'm meeting professor ronald hutton who's an expert in the period ronald here we are in the royal exchange what would this place have been like in 1666 think of a mixture of a gigantic shopping mall a gigantic stock exchange and a gigantic business park and surrounding it one of the great manufacturing areas of the land especially for luxury goods high quality produce it burned down in the great fire what was the effect of that on london's economy it's the place to which everybody comes to move money and goods around in london and the nation and was it just london's rich who were affected or was it the poor as well the royal exchange is the motor of the economy and the economy affects absolutely everybody the poor lose their jobs and the economy takes a spin dive just as the rich lose their capital so it's everybody just imagine at the present day the bank of england the stock exchange and most of the merchant banks all going up in smoke in a day and you have some sense of the impact so the jobs and the produce of the poor on the line as well as the money of the rich monday the second day of the fire has come to an end by nightfall scraps of scorched silk travel on the strong wind 30 miles west to beckons field and smoke spreads 50 miles to oxford writer samuel peeps reports the front line of the fire is now a mile wide [Music] after the break we see how on the next day london's top luxury shops turn to smoking ruins the blaze overtakes so much of the city that the only man who can save it is the king himself it's dawn on the third day of the great fire of london i'm walking in the footsteps of the fire uncovering the facts behind britain's most devastating inferno the first two days sunday and monday destroyed almost half of the city's buildings worse is to come it's now morning on tuesday the 4th of september day 3 of the great fire and the day it's destined to cause its most terrible damage the fire keeps heading remorselessly westwards blown by the powerful wind at dawn it came here to cheapside the city's most fashionable road this was the capital's top high street packed with traders merchants and famous taverns in 1666 just like today this street's cheap side was full of shops in fact the name cheap comes from the old english word meaning market and as well as being the center of london's jewellery trade this was also its busiest shopping area with a thriving market selling cheese and butter and herbs and fruits both here and in neighboring side streets but early on tuesday morning no one's shopping here all they want to do is save their lives and possessions before the fire gets to them from some pause our second londoner bookseller joshua curtin can actually see the blaze approaching he's rapidly packing his entire stock of books to take them to safety the fire's now completely out of control with around a hundred houses going up in flames every hour buildings are burning in all directions and eyewitness accounts tell us the wall of fire is over 30 feet high having started in the very south of the city and spread west to cheap side the fire is also now reaching the north side of the city wall it's now 6 30 am on tuesday the third day of the fire cheap side is fully ablaze and by the thames the fires coming ever closer to the temple on the previous day londoners lost an important battle on the riverfront when it advanced towards blackfriars here at queen hive it would have been absolute chaos up there you'd have seen people fleeing the city with their belongings in their arms or on carts while down here others would have been running desperately to the river to gather water in a futile attempt to put out the flames and remember all this could have been avoided the city's lord mayor had the chance to stop the fire in its first few hours but instead of action he said a woman could piss it out now people desperately needed someone to get things under control step forward this man the king charles ii charles takes charge and orders eight command posts to be set up on the western side of the city where the fire is rapidly headed each is responsible for protecting its local area as the inferno spread across the city the king and his brother the duke of york took a boat down river here to queenheim and they threw themselves into tackling the blaze passing water buckets helping to operate primitive fire engines and inspiring the firefighters we know from eyewitness accounts that this really impressed the king's subjects which was good news for charles because he needed his people on his side by the time of the fire charles had been king for six years returning the monarchy to england after his father charles the first was beheaded in 1649 but in these six years he'd only really proved himself in the arts of gambling and womanizing entertaining his mistresses and drinking buddies here in the undercroft of the banqueting house scandal followed scandal he would have been a tabloid editor's dream now i loved charles there never seemed to be a dull moment when he was around he might not be the sort of person you'd want to hang out with your daughter you'd sure as hell have a good time but that wasn't exactly the mood in 17th century london a hedonistic party animal always looking for fun wasn't what people wanted in a king they wanted someone whose finger was on the pulse someone who could give the country what it needed he'd certainly failed a year earlier when london was struck by a devastating plague charles's response wasn't to stay in help instead he packed up his things and left the city charles's behavior during the plague was widely criticized and by 1666 his reputation was at breaking point so when the great fire came along rather than leave london and issue orders from afar he decided to stay and fight seizing it as the pr opportunity of a lifetime this was charles ii chance to show himself as a man of action who put his people first it's still early in the morning on the third day of the fire the blaze is ferocious and continues to grow in all directions by 7am the fires moved further north and already some of the city's most magnificent medieval buildings have been destroyed some of them more than 300 years old grocers hall is in ruins draper's hall is gone then the fire reaches here merchant taylor's hall these buildings were some of the most sumptuous in london and belonged to livery companies incredibly wealthy organizations that were key to london's business life livery companies were trade and craft guilds and they originally existed to make sure that only members of a particular company could practice a particular trade so for example if you're a member of this company merchant tailors then you could work as a tailor and make clothes because of their vast wealth delivery companies also lent money to the king which gave them even more political influence when they go up in flames the city's economy suffers another great loss as the fire devoured the buildings that were the lifeblood of the city people desperately tried to fight the flames the fire seemed to leap ahead of them now a strong wind had been blowing since the beginning of the fire and contemporary accounts say the flames seemed to leap from building to building often as much as half a mile at a time to find out the real answer why the great fire was spreading so rapidly and why new fires were breaking out all over london i'm heading to imperial college one of the world's most renowned fire specialists dr guillermo rain has been doing brand new research about the connection between wildfires and the great fire of london from studying wildfires forest fires we know that in the presence of a wind when the flames are very large the production of embers become a major source of fire spread embers are small pieces of burning debris that can be blown from building to building we know that the first three days of the fire were very windy and the wind carried embers across london starting fires in distant places just like wildfires so this is something unique about the great fire of london that it was a fire that was so large that the fire saw the city as a forest literally really yeah to demonstrate how embers could spread the fire far and wide across london's rooftops dr rain has created two models of the clay roofs commonly found in 1666. the one on the right has good intact roof tiles the other is damaged and broken and you can see the wooden slats underneath many houses would have been hundreds of years old and the damaged roofs especially would have been very easy prey to embers at the time where the great fire of london really was prolific was quite a poor area of london so the houses would have been not well maintained almost slum-like i want to find out just how quickly the wind-blown embers started new fires once they landed on roofs dr rain has his own ember generator called the imperial dragon this replicates the way the embers would have been fanned and carried by the wind during the great fire oh wow it's straight away look at them go these aren't sparks these are embers and there's a difference there yeah because an ember still has a certain amount of fuel in itself does it exactly the embers bounce off the intact dials leaving the roof undamaged but the gaps in the broken tiles on the left let the embers in some of them are sneaking in those tiny little gaps aren't they so you can see that very small embers they just land there and they stay there and ignite it within minutes the roof with the broken tiles and the revealed wooden slats is on fire oh there we go it's up now we've got fire and now the fire will develop into the house and the whole building will be engulfed in fire given the huge spread of the great fire there would have been countless embers flying about starting new fires constantly to make matters worse the strong wind blowing at the time leads dr rain to estimate these embers could be carried hundreds of meters from their point of origin it's terrifying isn't it thinking that you were possibly safe because you were that far away from the main fire but actually you may very well have had a ticking time bomb lodged in your roof yeah it's now noon on day three of the great fire and eyewitnesses tell us that the city is covered in a huge cloud of smoke in fact if you can see the sun through it it looks as red as blood the king's brother the duke of york has set up a command center here at bridewell but already embers are falling all around him he's soon surrounded by fire and almost overcome he has no choice but to order his men to flee in fact he's lucky to get away alive and all around him the city is falling into chaos but the duke of york was a trained soldier and well used to dealing with extreme situations your everyday londoner however was not [Music] families were caught up in a living nightmare and by the third day of the fire the city was in a frenzy of madness and hysteria one witness says he saw women and children shrieking in fright and people running around like distracted creatures [Music] another account says that londoners were seized with dread what i find amazing from looking at these images and reading survivors accounts is that people don't seem to have behaved any differently to the way that we would do now we know of individuals even refusing to leave their houses and others whose brains just seem to shut down leaving them helpless against the flames dr sarita robinson has been studying people's reactions to traumatic experiences this is a case of what we would call cognitive paralysis and this is when people become so overwhelmed by what's going on around them that they can't actually process the information and form a rational behavior and therefore we just grind to a halt there's actually one story of an 80 year old watchmaker who sits in his workshop and refuses to leave in fact they find his bones with his keys yes in the case of your watchmaker then actually what we're seeing is uh some sort of denial behaviors perhaps they don't believe that they're going to be consumed by the fire so in other words what's going on it's a form of psychological comfort to people just to stay put and not think about the fire although as you say these consequences were fatal it's now 1 pm on tuesday afternoon and the fire has been raging for over three days with so many people terrified paralyzed or running around there were bound to be a few chances amid the mayhem one of the greatest dangers to what remained of public order was the prisons and here where the old bailey stands today was one of london's most famous jails it was called newgate and as the fire spread an armed guard marched the prisoners out of newgate and took them south to safety in southwark but of course some of the prisoners saw this as their perfect opportunity to make an escape and they scarfed in all directions well into the third day of the fire many other dodgy londoners exploited the situation by looting to find out why crimes like these became rife during the great fire i'm meeting rebecca radiel who has researched the subject extensively rebecca what i'm really interested in is the fact that so many petty crimes during the fire have you come across them a lot yes um and the stories are always um quite hilarious actually so you get people grabbing goods like tobacco like brandy they were goods that anyone could really buy but they were slightly luxurious as well and it wasn't like buying a loaf of bread and it wasn't a necessity so if you saw a tobacco shop that was vacant and clearly nobody was there lots of people would have just picked up these goods so it's like the london riots isn't it where people were sort of helping themselves yeah order has broken down so much that they don't think that they're going to get caught because actually the maximum punishment for stealing anything over a shilling was death if there were a vast quantity of people committing petty crimes how are the authorities going to deal with it you can't round up the whole of london no you can't so what they did instead was a proclamation was issued on the 19th of september which basically said if you've taken anything whether intentionally or not and just drop it off at finsbury park and we'll say no more about it [Music] the looters might have got off lightly but these were extraordinary times in such terrible circumstances who's to say that we would have behaved any differently it's now 1 30 pm on the third day of the fire and desperate londoners are trying new methods to halt its progress they start using gunpowder but in other parts of the city the fire rages on after the break we'll be heading to saint paul's cathedral to find out just how incredibly hot the great fire got so hot it even brought down the house of god we're exploring the great fire of london uncovering its secrets and feeling the heat behind the most terrible blaze in british history i'm walking the route of the fire every step of the way tracing its trail of devastation through the city from east to west it's tuesday the 4th of september the third day of the fire by the afternoon the blaze reaches ludgate hill encircling the area at the top the spiritual heart of the city here at the top of ludgate hill is the most significant building in the whole city more important than the livery company halls more important than the royal exchange it's london's very own cathedral saint paul's and on the third day of the fire the flames are getting closer and closer the old medieval saint paul's had been standing for almost 600 years that's longer than the rebuilt symbols we have today it was not only a place of worship but also a bustling hub for business at the time of the great fire samples was the center of england's book trade joshua curtin was a well-known bookseller who counted samuel peeps among his customers he'd been trading for many years and had a booming business when news of the fire broke the booksellers printers and stationers in this area were deeply anxious and understandably so they were surrounded by stacks and stacks of flammable materials books rolls of parchment and countless prints and pamphlets and those flammable materials were their livelihood desperate to save their stock the booksellers decided to hide everything underground inside some pools crypt thousands and thousands of books were rushed into the building joshua was allocated a spot over here and over the course of two panic-stricken days he heaved all of his books inside to safety or so he thought the booksellers thought the crypt was impregnable but the cathedral was being repaired and was covered in wooden scaffolding tragically the scaffolding caught fire and some paws went up in flames the fire around the cathedral was so hot that the very stones exploded like grenades [Music] but joshua might still have hoped that at least the crypt would be safe that is until as one eyewitness put it great beams and messy stones fell on the pavement and broke through into the crypt destroying all the books curtin had lost everything [Music] with the great cathedral now in flames our third londoner is also within reach of the fire living only a few streets away at christ hospital school sybil tame will soon need to take her daughters to safety everywhere around here buildings are on fire some paul's school has burned to the ground stationers hall that's burned to the ground the royal college of physicians at amen corner that's burned to the ground and still the wind continues to blow fanning the flames the fires now reach the point that firefighters call fully developed it's at its hottest and it's most dangerous to bring down a stone colossus like st paul's the fire must have been incredibly hot museum of london archaeology has in its collection objects that hold clues to the intense temperatures the fire reached i'm meeting lead archaeologist gustav milne gus what have we got here what we have is some material from a building right next to the bakehouse where the fire started this is a red brick was a red brick from the cellar floor of that basement and as you can see it's a little bit black what does that actually tell us it was a storage cell it was a warehouse in which barrels of wood pitch were being stored pitch was used on wooden boats and houses to waterproof them and stop them from rotting the problem with pitch it's combustible and what's happened is the wood pitch has boiled and percolated all the way through the brakes so for pitch to have have melted then that's at least 250 to 300 degrees also discovered in the storage cellar were barrels with distorted metal work which points to even higher temperatures for the bottom of the barrels to be carbonized like that you would have to have temperature about 700 degrees oh wow we've quickly ramped up temperatures yes yes in fact the temperature got so high that the metal not only got distorted it actually melted this is a padlock that was discovered by archaeologists and dated back to the time of the great fire of london now this would have been made of iron and you can see the damage on that and that's fire damage and to distort the metal like it has done there the temperatures involved would have been phenomenal i want to test exactly how great a temperature would have deformed this padlock so much and so find out how hot the great fire became i've enlisted the help of iric christensen from imperial college london and robin williams of blacksmith i've got a padlock here so can we use the forge here see what we can do with this padlock yeah certainly yeah eric you've got a complicated looking thermometer here is it that's essentially exactly it it's a temperature probe that can go to really high temperatures this state-of-the-art piece of kit can read temperatures over a thousand degrees so it's time to find out what temperature will melt the padlock so i'm just going to pop that there on the top let's see what happens shall we i've got richard behind me here who's pumping the bellows which is blowing air into our fire which is giving it all it needs to get up to really really high temperatures it's representative of what was going on at the great fire island because of the enormous winds that were going the amount of fuel that was available we take a reading after a few minutes despite the heat the padlock looks intact look at that glowing away good that's me gorgeous color hold you up there now eric we're over 700 degrees closer to 800 degrees 800 degrees look at it glow right let's get it in again the padlock is very hot but not deformed like the one found in the great fire ruins so we increase the temperature pull that out okay right let's have a look at this whoa oh look at that all right what are we at there so we are just shooting well above 1000 degrees right there it's melted and the metals burn we've burnt a hole through the iron there you certainly have goodness me we've managed to kind of replicate the padlock that was retrieved you can see the kind of temperatures we're talking about and we were we're over a thousand degrees to get that i mean that is ruined isn't it that's that's terrific our tests have confirmed that temperatures during the great fire reached over a thousand degrees enough to destroy the strongest of building materials like stone and iron and hot enough to devour saint paul's when some paws burned down the air was so hot a local thunderstorm broke out and lightning sparked above the blazing building the fire now claimed two more official deaths one an old lady and another an elderly man who risked the flames to get a blanket it took less than an hour for the cathedral to be gutted and it must have been terrifying to see as though london was a target for the wrath of god which is actually what people believed the lead from the cathedral roof melted and it poured down bloodgate hill the new cathedral of saint paul's was built within the footprint of the one lost in the great fire designed by the brilliant architect sir christopher wren it's one of the most famous landmarks in britain but hidden in the cathedral gardens there's a secret hardly anyone knows about looking forward to this underground a small part of the original cathedral still survives and i have a unique opportunity to see it so this is it this is the uh the doorway to the crypt can we have a look underneath this manhole cover the last fragments of the original from 1666 and apparently no one's been down here for decades so actually when you look down there it's pretty dark and grim and looks a bit musty but well let's see for myself oh god it's a bit of a tight squeeze to get down it actually oh when you're wow this is pretty amazing because here we are underneath some pools one of the great landmarks of london one of the great landmark buildings of the world and we can see something almost no one gets a chance to see the pillars of medieval saint paul's and we can also see over here what look like scorch marks these black marks on the stone it's amazing to think that those have been made by the great fire itself but what you've also got to imagine is london's booksellers and joshua curtin placing their stock down here while the great fire was building hoping against hope that all of their books which were their livelihood were going to be safe and then think of them back on street level as the flames were you know eating the city around them hoping that all of their precious stock down here was going to be safe it's incredible their hopes were dashed everything was destroyed it's good down here but i'm off to the land of the living the burning of saint paul's london's most significant religious building shocked the city but it also brought out the dark heart of londoners because someone surely had to take the blame surprisingly the first to be accused was not the pudding lane baker thomas farina instead people wanted to blame foreigners for starting the fire you have to remember that 17th century london was a social powder keg a spark could set it off at any time three days into the fire a mob of enraged londoners took to the streets following a rumor of a dutch invasion the city was descending into chaos human beings on the whole like there to be a culprit and they like to catch the culprit and so who were the prime suspects number one is the dutch we're at war with them number two we're also at war with the french and the french are worse than the dutch because they're catholic and the third are catholics in general the home-grown traditional english threat that actually had produced the gunpowder plot and are therefore capable of atrocity on a grand scale during the third day of the fire reports were coming in of a mob running a mock picking on innocent victims i think the worst case uh for me is a woman with an apron full of chicks little chickens in my some nut case thought that she was carrying fireballs in her apron she'd been throwing them around and a mob just got this idea set on her the clubs and cut her breasts off they pretty well literally went mad coming up next we find out more about why the most obvious of culprits the pudding lane baker himself mr farina managed to dodge the wrath of londoners and we discover who actually ended up paying the ultimate price for starting the great fire of london welcome back to the great fire of london it's now early evening on tuesday the 4th of september the third day of the great fire saint paul's is still in flames and so is the city's economy in this mad panic londoners cast the net widely for someone to blame against all common sense thomas farina the baker from the pudding lane area is not the first to be accused and when he finally has to answer for himself he quickly points the finger at someone else thomas farroner turned out to be a master at passing the buck and you can imagine his delight when the authorities began turning up the heat on a 26 year old watchmaker's son from normandy called robert huber huber was french he claimed to be catholic and like many terrified foreigners he was fleeing the country when he was caught none of that boded well but the thing that really damned him was when asked about who started the great fire of london he confessed it wasn't long before robert hubert was on trial and facing the death penalty and farina was off the hook amazingly a record of hubert's trial still exists it's kept here at the london metropolitan archives and i've been granted special permission to see it dr jacob field is a specialist on this period and knows all about poor robert hubert jacob what do we have here so we have a document here 350 years old which is the original trial record of the case against robert hubert the man accused of starting the great fire of london well what does it say so it says here in latin which was used in legal records at the time that robert hubert lately of london a labourer diabolically voluntarily maliciously and feloniously started the great fire by putting a fireball through the window of a bakery on pudding lane why did he confess well this is where the story becomes quite sad and a little tragic robert hubert was someone who was mentally unbalanced and it's very likely that he did it for attention but if at a distance of 350 years you can judge that he probably wasn't in a fit mental state to give a confession like this why did they believe him well really they were looking for someone to blame and also there was another figure who stood to gain by this confession so have a look at the signatures uh under the indictment and these are the people basically saying that this is true and this is what happened so whose names do you see there thomas farina thomas farrell the baker yes this is thomas farina the elder baker who lives on pudding lane and if you look at some other names who else do you see we've got hannah farina and thomas fahrenher jr so the whole founder family is testifying against him that's right so all of the foreigners are basically coming to court and saying we had nothing to do with this there's no way it's our fault that the fire started and this man robert hubert started it all with throwing a fireball through our window so they're behind this miscarriage of justice they really are the bakers from hell are they they don't come out of this well at all robert hubert paid the ultimate price and was hanged at tyburn gallows on the 29th of october 1666. the great fire of london had claimed yet another victim so who'd have thought the fairness could be so evil yes they must have thanked their lucky stars that for robert huber was so mentally disturbed that he confessed to starting the fire and just because they'd signed the indictment didn't mean it actually witnessed anything no no it just meant that they were trying to escape being blamed for starting the blaze we got away with it scot-free with some paws crumbling in flames the fire now gets as far as the lore courts of temple this is over a mile and a half from the pudding lane area where it began the fire just keeps spreading but now the fire's coming towards me heading west along the strand the king's brother the duke of york is struggling desperately to fight it and all around here houses are being torn down to stop the fire from spreading any further down there towards the king's palace at whitehall we've already seen our banker robert weiner and our bookseller joshua curtin watch their homes and businesses go up in smoke and flames now our third londoner shoemaker sybil tame is the last to be caught by the blaze [Music] sybil thame was a widow who lived and worked at christ hospital school making shoes for orphaned children when the fire started her workshop was located over a mile away from the epicentre of the blaze living on the western edge of the city she must have thought she was safe from harm but by tuesday evening things had taken a turn for the worse [Music] sybil was so incredibly unlucky her workshop caught a few of the last embers from the fire and was engulfed by flames she must have assumed the fire wouldn't reach her as we know she'd done nothing to move her things out of harm's way or maybe she just couldn't afford the exorbitant rates carters were demanding to move people's things sybil lost everything her home her livelihood even her tools sharing the same fate as thousands of destitute londoners she now had to find another way to provide for herself and her daughters it's now the end of the third day and all over london the fire isn't showing any signs of slowing down i've come to the eastern part of the city to one of britain's greatest landmarks the tower of london now at the time of the great fire this place was already nearly 600 years old but so far it had escaped any damage because strong winds have been blowing the fire west through the city where it's been devouring everything in its path but on the evening of tuesday the 4th of september the wind changes direction now blowing from west to east the fire is heading straight for the tower of london not only is the tower a symbol of security for the whole nation it's actually a massive ammunition store there are over 9 000 barrels of gun powder in there if the great fire reaches the tower it's going to go up in one vast terrifying explosion for londoners this has been the worst day so far their beloved city is being consumed before their eyes it's been incredible to see the temperatures the great fire reached and you really have to feel for those ordinary londoners whose lives were ripped apart by the fire no one seemed safe but the great fire isn't done yet join us next time to find out how it changed britain forever that's hot we'll find out why fire breaks could be worse than useless oh there it goes again we'll investigate how many people actually died in the blaze my belief is that hundreds possibly even thousands of people died in the fire of london and we'll discover what happened to the tower of london and trace the fire's final moments this is the point where the great fire of london stopped

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 115,695

Keywords: history documentaries, absolute history, world history, ridiculous history, quirky history, great fire of london, suzannah lipscomb, suzannah lipscomb hidden killers, great fire, 1666

Id: RNJzNBMLWDc

Length: 44min 33sec (2673 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021