History Ablaze

Following yesterday's pattern, another historical theme surfaces today: 350 years ago this weekend The Great Fire of London consumed a large part of that famous capital city.

From The Book of Days website
SNIP:

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON

London was only a few months freed from a desolating pestilence, it was suffering, with the country generally, under a most imprudent and ill-conducted war with Holland, when, on the evening of the 2nd of September 1666, a fire commenced by which about two-thirds of it were burned down, including the cathedral, the Royal Exchange, about a hundred parish churches, and a vast number of other public buildings. The conflagration commenced in the house of a baker named Farryner, at Pudding Lane, near the Tower, and, being favoured by a high wind, it continued for three nights and days, spreading gradually eastward, till it ended at a spot called Pye Corner, in Giltspur Street. Mr. John Evelyn has left us a very interesting description of the event, from his own observation, as follows:

'Sept. 2, 1666.-This fatal night, about ten, began that deplorable fire near Fish Streete in London.

'Sept. 3.-The fire continuing, after dinner I took coach with my wife and soon, and went to the Bankside in Southwark, where we beheld that dismal spectacle, the whole Citty in dreadful flames neare ye water side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames Street, and upwards towards Cheapeside downe to the Three Cranes, were now consum'd...............

Astrologer William Lilly had predicted the Great Fire years before, via one of his mysterious hieroglyphic drawings. A good relevant essay, by Maurice McCann, is at Skyscript


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Lilly, it was claimed, had successfully predicted the outbreak of the fire fourteen years before when he had published Monarchy or No Monarchy in England a book containing nineteen hieroglyphic drawings giving carefully disguised predictions. As a consequence of one of these, featuring a large fire, Lilly was seriously suspected of causing the fire. It was also thought that he wished to obtain credit for forecasting the event. Being fearful of what might happen to him, Lilly persuaded the committee that his prediction had not been precise and he was allowed to go.

After the fire?
A snip and Conclusion from an article by Dr John Schofield at a BBC website
London After the Great Fire

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At least 65,000 people had been made homeless by the Fire. At first they camped in the fields outside the walls, but within days had dispersed to surrounding villages or other parts of London. Rents soared in the unburnt area, but somehow accommodation was found for all who needed it. Much merchandise had been destroyed, and there was virtually no fire insurance, so many people were ruined, and some moved away permanently.

Conclusion -
We have perhaps been overimpressed by the Great Fire, and must place it in context - the Fire, destructive though it was, devastated only about one third of the conurbation of London then standing. Within the area of the devastation a new city of brick and occasionally stone arose, but around it a larger area remained timber-framed for generations to come. Inside the City, if we could have walked down a street like Fenchurch Street in 1675, we would have seen an abrupt change from the brick buildings of the new city to the timber and plaster frontages of the pre-Fire city, at the point where the Fire was stopped. This sudden contrast took generations to erase. But it is also true that the Fire created the opportunity to build, in the central area, a city in a new form, which would quickly become the hub of the British Empire in the decades which followed. So the creation of the Empire owes something to the Great Fire of 1666.