Beyond living memory: the Great Fire of London
History · Key Stage 1 · The School
What happened
The fire started in a bakery on Pudding Lane. The date was 2 September 1666. It burned for four days. It destroyed about 13,000 houses. It destroyed old St Paul's Cathedral too. Very few deaths were written down at the time. But historians think more poor people died than that. Nobody counted them.
Why it spread
The houses were built from wood. They were packed close together. Their upper floors stuck out over the street. The roofs almost touched across the top. It had been a long dry summer. A strong east wind was blowing. The only way to fight a fire was to pull houses down and make a gap. The Lord Mayor waited too long before he did that.
How we know
Samuel Pepys kept a diary. He wrote about the fire while it was happening. He even buried his cheese and his wine in the garden. A diary is a PRIMARY SOURCE. That means someone who was there wrote it at the time. It is very useful. But it is not neutral. Pepys wrote what he saw and what he cared about. He did not write the whole story.
Think about September 1666. The houses were wooden and coated in pitch. Their upper floors stuck out so the roofs nearly touched. The summer had been long and dry. A strong east wind was blowing. To fight the fire people had leather buckets, and hooks to pull houses down. And the Lord Mayor delayed. That is five causes. The fire needed all five of them. Change any one and the city might have been saved.