Short History Of... - The Great Fire of London

Episode Date: July 10, 2022

In September 1666, the Great Fire of London consumed hundreds of acres of houses, shops, churches, and government buildings. But what effect did politics and memories of a recent civil war have on the spread of the fire, and the hunt for someone to blame? And once the flames had died down, how did the people of the city rebuild what they’d lost? This a Short History of the Great Fire of London. Written by Danny Marshall. With thanks to Rebecca Rideal, historian and author of 1666: Plague, War, and Hellfire. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's shortly after midnight in London on the 2nd of September 1666. There's been no rain for weeks and the warm night air is thick with the odors of various trades, butchers, fishmongers, tanners. Shop signs creak in the growing wind. Halfway along the street, one swinging board advertises the bakery of Thomas Fariner. Like most of the shops of Pudding Lane, his is a three-story building. It's made of timber and panels of wattle and daub, a lattice of wooden strips overlaid with clay and straw. And as in the other shops, Farinna and his family are asleep in the bedrooms upstairs.

Suddenly he is woken by his son, who runs into the room shouting. It's then that Farinna smells it, the scent everyone in this city dreads even more than the raw sewage and offal in the gutters. It's the smell of burning. As his son runs to wake his daughter and the maid, Farinna leaps from his bed. He rushes onto the landing to find thick, black smoke rolling across the ceiling. A glow flickers under a door at the foot of the stairs. He tries to go down, but it's already too hot.

With a crack, the door below leans out, followed by flames that lick the ceiling. Fariner's forehead prickles with sweat. Farron's forehead prickles with sweat. He retreats, nearly colliding with his daughter, followed by their maid, still dressed in their long nightgowns. They're safe, but not for long. There's a crash from downstairs, and the whole building shudders. The atmosphere is choking now, and the hallway is filling with acrid fumes. The fire scorches the whitewashed walls, the paint beginning to bubble and peel as it leaps up the stairs. There's no way out.

Fariner leads the household up the next flight of stairs, into the attic. The maid screams as another crash erupts below. Up here, they can breathe, but they're trapped, as much at the mercy of the nearing flames as the imminent collapse of the building itself. The baker doesn't wait to see what comes for them first. He flings open the leaded window, kicking at the frame, raining shattered glass down the tiles. Hauling himself out onto the roof, he shouts back in for the others. down the tiles. Hauling himself out onto the roof, he shouts back in for the others. First, he pulls his daughter out, then his son. He slides down towards the guttering to the edge of the roof. Smoke billows onto the street below, obscuring the certain death which awaits if he slips. Leaning out across the narrow street, Fariner rests his hands on the overhanging upper story of the shop opposite and hammers on the window.

The butcher who lives there wakes, thinking for a moment he is being robbed. Then he sees the familiar face and hurries to help the Baker's family inside. Above them, still in the attic, is the Screaming Maid. She will not climb out onto the roof with the others for fear of falling to the street below. But the greatest threat to her safety is already consuming the walls and floors of the house she refuses to leave. Soon, she will become the fire's first victim. For now, her screams mingle with the noise in the street. Shouts of a single word.

The word the inhabitants of the old city fear the most. Fire. The Great Fire of London was a conflagration of biblical proportions which ravaged the English capital in September 1666. Over four days it consumed hundreds of acres of houses, shops, churches and government buildings. It gutted the ancient city, leading to widespread social disruption and economic problems. But it also swept the way for new buildings and new ideas, ushering in a more enlightened age.

Indecision and poor planning faced off against leadership and courage. The disaster revealed the worst and best of humanity under pressure. But how did one tiny spark go on to destroy half of one of the largest, wealthiest, most advanced cities on Earth? What effect did politics and memories of a recent civil war have on the spread of the fire and the hunt for someone to blame? And once the flames had died down, how did the people of the city rebuild what they'd lost? I'm John Hopkins, and this is a short history of the Great Fire of London. of The Great Fire of London.

Hi everyone. I'm John Hopkins, the new host of A Short History Of. Continue to hear Paul McGann on Real Dictators and other upcoming Noiser projects. I hope you enjoy Season 3, Episode 1, A Short History of The Great Fire of London. The 1660s are pivotal to English history, with London standing at a crossroads. At the start of the decade, Charles II is crowned King of England,

restoring the monarchy to the country after a series of brutal and bloody conflicts. Rebecca Redil is a historian, history podcaster and author of 1666, Plague, War and Hellfire. The early 1660s were a period of relative calm after what had been a period of huge upheaval. So we'd had the civil wars, which had raged throughout the 1640s. Then we'd had Oliver Cromwell take charge, so a period of the protectorate. His son had proven not to be as able a leader as him, so there'd been lots of questions as to who would come next. Charles is welcomed back to Westminster,

bringing a revival of the monarchy after 20 years of the so-called interregnum. But he returns to a very different England, a country starved of colour. So Charles II, the son of Charles I, who'd had his head chopped off, returned to the throne in a period known as the Restoration. And it had been an exciting period for a lot of people. He decided to reopen

theatres, for example, which was a huge cultural moment. In addition to that, we also have a scientific flourishing whereby the Royal Society is founded and you have lots of really big beasts of science that come to the fore during the 1660s, 70s and 80s. People like Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren, all these big names that you associate with science. The Reformation is seen as an age of enlightenment, prosperity and freedom, of science and discovery, and a growing empire with rising influence on the world stage. But good times never last forever, and in 1665 the brakes hit hard. Hostilities escalate between England and the Dutch Republic. In far-flung trading outposts in West Africa, the rival powers contend for precious stones, gold, and control of the burgeoning slave trade. This escalated even further into all-out war, which was mainly a naval war. This is the main issue that people are concerned with in early 1665, 1666.

issue that people are concerned with in early 1665, 1666. But also we get the famous Great Plague of London, which started in early 1665 and saw, we think, probably around 100,000 people lose their lives. Even so, London in 1666 is the third largest city in the world. A quarter of its inhabitants are crammed into the old medieval perimeter, bounded on the south by the mighty River Thames. Massive defensive walls on the other three sides surround a labyrinth of unregulated, mostly timber structures, crowded slums and narrow alleyways. But the city has long since outgrown its ancient borders and is already ringed with suburbs. So London at this point in time is a metropolis in three separate parts. So you have the walled city of London, which is the ancient historic heart of the city. And within this walled section, which you can enter through a series of

gates around the walls, you have all the traditional trades and the livery halls associated with those trades. Then the next part of this metropolis of London is the kind of sprawling suburbs around the walled city. So these are places that are a little bit more ramshackle, except for the Strand, which leads from the city of London out through the suburbs and right round to the third part, which is the city of Westminster. That's where you have the palaces of power. London is a bustling home to people from every part of society. Nobles and gentry, apprentices and domestics. It attracts immigrants from elsewhere in Britain and further afield in Europe and beyond. Young people flock here to find training, employment and their place in life. It was also a port city and that's something that we need to remember.

The reason London was so important was because it was a port. So there were lots of goods coming in and out of London at this point in time, connecting London and England to the wider world. I think it's important to remember that London has a population of around 500,000 people. The next biggest cities are significantly smaller. So you have places like Norwich that has around 20,000 to 30,000 people. The capital city of Scotland, Edinburgh, has around 30,000 people living there. So London really is this huge anomaly in the British landmass. In a corner of this metropolis sits the small, unassuming Pudding Lane. Despite the pleasant-sounding name,

pudding is a medieval word for offal or organ meat, which is carted down from the butchers of East Cheap to be dumped in the Thames nearby. The narrow street is home to tailors, taverns, fishmongers and other traders, but the majority are butchers' shops. Halfway up stands the bakery of Thomas Fariner, who holds a contract to supply baked goods to the Royal Navy, fuelling the ongoing war with the Dutch. There were lots of streets that could have claimed to

have been the most smelly streets, but I think Pudding Lane was probably up there because it had lots of trades that dealt with food and drink and, you know, oils and things. So it was a lively street. It was also a really tightly packed street, like most places within the City of London. Lively Street, it was also a really tightly packed street, like most places within the city of London. Thomas Farriner was there and had been there, we think, for a long while as a baker. He lived in his house, which included the bakehouse, so people tended to live where they worked. In these narrow streets of the city, land is at a premium, with the ground floor area subject to taxation. To maximize internal space, each level of a building projects further out over the street, until in some narrow streets they're almost touching.

Though no one knows exactly how, it's here in the bakery, early on Sunday the 2nd of September 1666, that the catastrophe starts. By the time it's discovered, it is already too large for the baker and his family to tackle alone, and they quickly make their escape. But although they are helped by these overhanging floors, this architecture will quickly become one of the contributing factors in the spread of the fire. Five years earlier, in 1661, the King had issued a proclamation banning overhanging structures, but it was ignored by the city authorities. In 1665, a second proclamation warned specifically of the increased fire risk. It recommended prison for offending builders and demolition for any structures that didn't conform.

However, once again, city authorities defied the monarch. There's an interesting relationship between the crown and the city of London. All cities have a hierarchy and a kind of bureaucratic social order, which is usually made up of aldermen, then the Lord Mayor, and other important people that are in charge. But because London is so big, it has this extra power. It's obviously where the MPs from around the country

come to meet in the Palace of Westminster. So there's always been this kind of tension, tug and pull between the Crown and London, because London doesn't necessarily belong to the king or queen but it is their most important City anything within London falls under the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor and the alderman during the civil wars we saw it claimed by the parliamentarians it became a parliamentarian City so there's history there initially the blaze is contained to a couple of shops and houses on Pudding Lane. Within an hour of the alarm being raised, the parish constables arrive to assess the situation. They decide the houses either side should be demolished to create a firebreak.

Creating a gap to allow the fire to burn itself out without spreading to adjoining properties is one of the key weapons in a firefighter's arsenal putting out fires hasn't changed it's always the same thing you have to stop the source of fuel you have to limit the amount of oxygen there they would put fires out with water there were also fire engines that people use now they weren't fire engines obviously as we think of them today they were more like huge barrels on carts where people would use a pump to kind of squirt water out and they were used if they could fit down the roads and streets usually they couldn't if a fire got too big there are ways and means to

do it so there are kind of hooks that people would use to pull houses down or affected areas down they would create fire breaks by pulling down buildings around a fire if it was getting too big. The mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, is sent for to authorise the demolition. But mindful of his need to answer to the aldermen, he refuses to allow soldiers into the city to help. London's ruling elite fought on the parliamentarian side during the recent civil wars and do not trust the monarch. Bloodworth will do everything he can to keep the king's power

and influence out of the city. He refuses to order the demolition of buildings for a fire he believes to be of minimal concern. Remarking that a woman might piss it out, he returns home to sleep. While Bloodworth settles back into bed, the problem intensifies. Locals set up lines of buckets, but it's useless. In the absence of decisive leadership, the blaze rages through the surrounding buildings. A third of a mile to the east, in a street close to the Tower of London, 33-year-old naval administrator and diarist Samuel Pepys is woken by his maid. He looks out of his bedroom window in his nightgown

and sees an orange glow illuminating smoke that rolls away in the worsening wind. But though it's a significant fire, it's nothing London hasn't seen before, and he retires back to bed. When he woke up at 7am for the second time and saw that the fire was rather large and probably was something that the king should know about, and it probably would be good if he was the one to tell the king about it for his own ambitions he left his home he went to go and get a better look at the fire from the river thames and he went to the tower of london and he saw how huge it was and he headed straight to whitehall to go and tell charles ii whether he was the first person to tell charles ii i don't know but he certainly acted as though he was. And Charles said to him he needed

to go back to London, find Bloodworth, tell Bloodworth to start pulling down houses, and he would send some men to help him do this. It's now mid-morning. The streets of London are busier than usual for a Sunday. Among the throngs of well-dressed people heading to church are soot-blackened figures darting back and forth, carrying children and armfuls of belongings. Others still are rushing to spread the news, but gossip is wholly unnecessary. news. But gossip is wholly unnecessary. Thick black clouds are spreading above the city, blown west by a strong wind which is strengthened throughout the morning. A handsome coach slows to a stop at Ludgate, an ancient city gateway maybe three-quarters of a mile from the blaze. The crowds clogging the streets have prevented the coach from travelling with any speed,

so its occupant takes to his feet. Samuel Pepys steps down and surveys the scene. He is dressed in his finest clothes, fresh from an audience with the King at Westminster. Pepys pauses beneath the tall, pointed spire of St Paul's to watch the crowds ramming into the entrances. The people of the city reason that no matter how large the fire gets, the enormous stone cathedral cannot burn. An endless stream of hand carts is pulling up in the yard. From these, people are unloading books, cloth, furniture from their homes, and goods from their shops. cloth, furniture from their homes, and goods from their shops.

Hurriedly, they carry them down to the safety of the crypt. St. Paul's is undergoing renovations, and Pepys can see several people climbing the scaffold to get a better view. He presses along Cannon Street through the deepening crowds. The smell of burning drifts on the wind, and Pepys diverts down back alleys to avoid the throng rushing both towards and away from the fire. He stops a man who is carrying a table on his back, and asks if he's seen the mayor and his constables. Sweat dripping from his filthy face, the terrified man pulls away.

He tells Peeps it's reckoned 300 homes are burning now. If Bloodworth's dealing with the fire, he could be anywhere. Peeps presses on. To his right, through a gap in the buildings and warehouses, he can see the Thames. Boats flit in all directions, sitting low in the water and piled high with goods. Along the waterfront, desperate city folk have resorted to throwing their possessions into the river. Behind them, the tightly packed houses on London Bridge are beginning to catch alight. Mindful of the urgency of his mission from the king, Pepys speeds up. Most of the crowds are standing around. Others are still carrying buckets up from the river in a futile attempt to do something. A woman sits in the gutter, head in hands. She is too shocked to console the young children at her feet, their soot-stained faces streaked with tears.

Peeps turns a corner and feels the heat on his face. It is as if someone has cleared a swathe of London and built a huge bonfire in its place. This is no longer the few burning streets he had told the king about. This is a vision of hell. Everything is bathed in an unearthly orange glow, and sparks dance in the wind as wood cracks and pops. And it's deafening. Even the wailing of the crowd is drowned out by the roar of the blaze. Blackened timbers claw from the conflagration, shimmering in the heat. His face starting to redden, peeps ducks back down an alley and resumes his search. He finally finds Sir Thomas Bloodworth at the end of Cannon

Street, surrounded by constables, soldiers, and local men. He is dabbing at his face with a handkerchief, and his expression says it all. His earlier response was a terrible mistake, and it's now too late to write it. Pepys tells the mayor he has come direct from the king, with orders that the houses surrounding the fire be torn down. But the mayor won't see sense. An argument ensues, but rather than prompting action, it ends with Sir Thomas Bloodworth storming away, abandoning the city to its fate. The Lord Mayor looked thoroughly dejected, didn't know what to do, and basically said that he needed to go. He'd been up all night and he wasn't seen again throughout the duration of the Great Fire of London. Pepys then gives this really vivid account of everything that

he sees and everything that he's going through. And you can see the despair kind of escalating throughout the diary entries. Initially, he thinks his house might be okay, but then he starts, like lots of other people of the same social standing, to move his household items outside of the city of London. He's left in his house with his wife with not very much stuff. So they're eating leftovers for days. They're not sleeping very much. And I think his situation would not be dissimilar to lots of people in London at that time. By midday on Sunday, all attempts at dousing the flames are abandoned. The streets are gridlocked as panicked crowds try to flee through the narrow gates in the city walls. The king travels down the Thames by boat to survey the scene for himself.

He is appalled to see that houses are still not being demolished. Overstepping his authority and in direct challenge to the mayor, the king assumes command. His first order is to direct his troops to pull down buildings west of the fire, but while this might have helped hours ago, the chance to regain control has already passed. The city was a wooden city. Not just a wooden city, but it was a wooden city that had enjoyed a really warm summer. So every piece of wood within that city was dry and ready for burning. The fuel was there. The other thing that we need to remember is that there was a really strong wind blowing westward at that point in time as well.

So that's how you had the oxygen, and that's where you get the direction of the fire. By the afternoon, the fire is a living beast, devouring the city streets at a time. It's so intense that it is now creating its own weather, sucking in air like a chimney and creating gale force winds through the narrow alleyways. When we think of fires, we think of like a nice soft crackling sound, you know, sitting by the fire with maybe a warm drink and things. But when a fire is at the scale of the Great Fire of London, there's nothing soft and gentle about it.

It's loud and the cracks and bangs of this fire were so loud that the accounts of the witnesses are filled with these noises. The descriptions of the fire, that while it was raging there was no night and there was no day, it was only fire. And you had this red, red hot orange heat and light of the fire but then above that you had these big thick billowing clouds of black smoke that's all you could see so it was so bright in an age where obviously no electricity so the brightness would be unimaginable for them but also this darkness above. So I think the kind of the biblical imagery is something that we should probably remember as well. By early evening, the fire has traveled almost half a mile from Pudding Lane.

It's easily the most devastating in the country's history. But in the minds of Londoners, this is no accident or act of God. Such an epic event must surely have a cause. Suspicions begin to grow that the fire has been deliberately started. In such a climate of fear and despair, it's easy for thoughts to take a sinister turn. for thoughts to take a sinister turn. England was at war with the Dutch Republic at this point in time. And in August of 1666, there had been an attack on a Dutch village named Terschilling. The English had set fire to a number of houses. And this had been celebrated in London with bonfires and the usual kinds of celebration after what was seen to be a successful

win in the Anglo-Dutch wars. But the Dutch had been absolutely appalled and horrified by this because it seemed to go against the nature of warfare. It was seen to be an unprovoked attack on innocent civilians. Smaller fires break out thanks to embers drifting on the wind into tinder-dry wood and thatch. But the horrified, traumatized city folk miss the obvious explanation, and rumors begin to spread that Dutch and French spies are lighting the fires. Some say they intend to raze the whole of London to the ground. Terrified and angry, Londoners start looking for someone to blame for the loss of their homes, their ruined livelihood and their hunger. As night falls and the city burns bright as day, a pack mentality emerges. They found whatever weapons they could and they attacked people.

There was also an attack on a mob that was circling the Spanish ambassador's assistant at some point and that was only stopped because a member of the nobility saw what was going on and took the assistant away to safety there were lots of other attacks and lots of other rumors of arson Monday Dawns across the rest of England rumours of arson. Monday dawns across the rest of England, but night and day have no meaning in the raging firestorm. Samuel Pepys, still in his nightgown, describes the day as a hell of confusion and torment, as he accompanies a cart laden with his money, plates and other household items.

His hands and nightgown are filthy. He has spent the last hour burying his wines and supply of expensive Parmesan cheese in a pit in his garden. In the city center, bankers' houses are blazing, prompting a rush to rescue their gold before it melts. But the wealthy classes on the fringes move nearer, to speculate at the unfolding catastrophe. From a safe distance, on Hampstead Heath, Highgate and Shooter's Hill, it appears the whole of London is burning. In places, the flames are over 100 feet high. The river is so crowded with barges loading up with goods that it seems almost possible to walk from one side to the other.

Swathes of the northern bank of the Thames are burning fiercely, with sporadic explosions raining flaming debris across a wide area, sending fresh plumes of acrid smoke upwards. acrid smoke upwards. Here, in the warehouses along the wharves, tons of flammable goods are stacked ready for the bonfire. Timber, cloth, coal, and gunpowder. The houses of the rich and powerful are just as combustible. Such is their mistrust of the monarch that the wealthy have refused to give up their personal supplies of gunpowder. Entire homes detonate with the force of a bomb. The king has put his brother James, the Duke of York, in charge of operations on the ground. Command posts are established at a number of points throughout the city, pressing men into gangs of firefighters.

Thirty soldiers are stationed at each post, led by trusted courtiers with the authority to tear down buildings. The city gates become bottlenecks as people surge to escape. But not everyone is on the way out. A few days ago, hiring a cart cost a couple of shillings. Now it costs the equivalent of thousands of pounds. And for miles around, anyone owning a cart is travelling into London. There was probably some altruism there, but I think mainly it was for profit because the prices of carts went right up, they skyrocketed.

So people were putting their things onto carts and having to leave the city. There were also people, poorer people, that were playing the role of porter and offering to take people's items out of the city for them. There were also opportunistic people, that's a fair way of saying it actually, thieves, that were going into people's houses and stealing their goods, because you know if you're a thief this is the perfect time to do it, people have left their homes, they're open and you can go in. And if their things go missing, well, the house might be burnt down later. So no one will know.

For a time, the magistrates order all city gates shut. The hope is that this will force people to turn their attention from escape or profiteering to fighting the fire. All it does is feed the panic. In the fields beyond the city walls, refugee camps are filling with families. Makeshift tents spring up, and everywhere are carts and barrows loaded with piles of goods.

Most evacuees have only the possessions they could carry on their backs, and have nowhere else to go. The General Letter Office and the publishing offices of the government's official journal, the London Gazette, go up in flames. The lack of post and news adds to the panic and paranoia, and when letters stop arriving further afield, people assume England is under attack. In London, word spreads that the Lord Mayor has fled the city. Increasing numbers of soldiers are on the streets. Rumors of foreign agents

intensify, and reports begin to circulate that a whole-scale military invasion by the Dutch is imminent. All of this pours fuel on the mob's burning rage. As night descends on the second day of the fire, violence again erupts on the streets. It is late on Monday the 3rd of September, 1666, but there is no darkness. An area roughly ten miles wide is illuminated by the glow. A contrast of bright orange and deep shadows gives every street a nightmarish, otherworldly appearance. In the wide open spaces in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, a man sits astride a horse. He is the very image of a dashing cavalier officer, with his long hair streaming out in the wind from beneath a wide-brimmed hat.

His baggy, frilled shirt billows in the gale, and what was once a colourful sash is tied about his waist. James, the Duke of York, had originally worn his riding jacket and armour, but the unbearable heat has long since forced him to remove the layers. His face, hands, and clothes are blackened with soot. He has been on the front lines of this battle, directing his soldiers in the tactical destruction of buildings to create firebreaks. But increasingly, since midday, he and his men have been employed not in fighting the fire but in controlling the mobs which terrorize the ruined streets.

Behind him, merchants are still filling the cathedral to the rafters with their goods, reasoning the thick stone walls will protect them. He scans the crowds jostling towards Ludgate and the refugee camps beyond. Mostly working-class men pushing handcarts, their wives clutching bundles of clothes. Stunned children, laden with possessions, trail behind their parents, blinking in confusion. Then, in the shadows of an arched alley, James sees movement. Riding closer, he can see a group of men huddled in a shop doorway. A gang of looters, perhaps. The alley is too narrow for a cavalry charge. James shouts to his men, swinging down from his horse. Before his soldiers reach him, he has already drawn his sword and is sprinting towards the group.

The men look up, startled to see the Duke of York charging them. They take one glance at the company of guards behind him and run, tripping over each other as they flee down the alley. James comes to an abrupt stop at a bundle of fabric dropped by the gang. But then the bundle groans, and James realizes it is a man. He sheathes his sword, crouches, and rolls the man over. He is filthy, bloodied, and terrified. His hands fly up to protect his head, and he mumbles incoherently in French. protect his head, and he mumbles incoherently in French.

It's then that James sees the crude noose tied about the man's neck. He follows the rope curling along the ground, up the wall, hanging over a shop sign, swinging in the wind. I'm still so surprised that the members of the nobility managed to suppress this anger and this fear. I mean, it was bad. What happened to foreign-born people in London at this time was awful, and it would have been absolutely terrifying, but it's surprising that it didn't get even worse. I always think of the Duke of York as being a kind of flash-heart character. get even worse. I always think of the Duke of York as being a kind of flash heart character, stupid but brave. When it comes to fire, there are simple ways to put it out and you need to have a team of people spread out around the fire to try and tackle it. It's simple. So he was a good person to be in charge because he had this kind of brave mentality and he'd proven his bravery

before. He'd been at sea and he'd been celebrated for his role in one of the early battles in the Second Anglo-Dutch War. And yes, he was absolutely out there rallying troops, organising men around the different points where they'd pre-planned to try and tackle different parts of the fire. And also the king was out too and they made sure they were visible because that was really important politically. And during the Great Plague, the Royal Court had left the city of London, which I can kind of understand because you don't want to be somewhere where you can catch plague, but the optics aren't great when you're the leader of a country. So it was really important, I think, politically for not just James the Duke of York,

but Charles II as well, to make sure that they were seen to be doing things during the Great Fire. And they were seen and people saw them and they kind of boosted morale. How much effect they really had on countering the fire is a different matter but they were there and seen tuesday morning the third day of the fire is the day of greatest devastation baynard's castle a huge solid stone mansion near the city walls in the west has been gutted overnight. If a stone building can burn, what hope is there for the rest of the city? The wide shopping area of Cheapside is burning, tearing through its stores of flammable material.

A mile to the west of Pudding Lane, James and his soldiers make a stand at the Fleet River to create a firebreak, but the flames leap across the water to outflank them. The stone pavements are glowing red with the heat, and it's impossible to get close enough to pull down buildings in its path. The Inferno is now moving eastwards as well, against the wind, towards the Tower of London. The castle contains the largest stores of gunpowder in the country. If it burns, the devastation will be catastrophic.

The garrison takes matters into its own hands, raiding its own cache of explosives. The soldiers create space around the fortress by blasting apart buildings close by. But the tower isn't the only iconic building at risk. around the fortress by blasting apart buildings close by. But the tower isn't the only iconic building at risk. By late morning, the fire has reached St. Paul's Cathedral. St. Paul's was made of stone, unlike lots of places in the city of London.

And because it was made of stone, and because it was so big, and because it was so historic, and because it had been there for so long, it was seen as a safe place to store goods. There was a natural fire break around St. Paul's because there was a place called St. Paul's Churchyard. It was a safe place. Unfortunately, the cathedral was also a place that was in desperate need of some repair. And because of this, there was wooden scaffold all over St. Paul's

and witnesses saw the fire kind of creeping up the scaffolding taking this wooden structure and even then this is the wooden structure outside a stone building but it got higher and higher and the first part to actually light up was the top of St Paul's and it spread and the lead sheeting at the top of St. Paul's and it spread and the lead sheeting at the top of St. Paul's Cathedral melted away, ran down the cathedral. There were lots of accounts of the stones blasting and being like grenades almost in the way that they were breaking apart and it was absolutely devastating for people to see this happen. With the cathedral destroyed and the heart of the city a smouldering ruin, by Wednesday

the wind finally dies down, and with it the flames. The large-scale demolition has finally had an effect and the fire has used up all the fuel it can reach. The Great Fire of London has burned itself out. In the fields outside the city, refugees huddle in the dirt. They're starving, robbed of almost all their possessions, and they have no homes to return to. Appeals are sent to neighbour neighboring towns and villages for food and sustenance for the displaced people. The Navy provides sail canvas to make tents.

Tons of dense baked crackers made of flour and salt called ship's biscuit are distributed, just like the kind Fariner had been making only days before. distributed, just like the kind Farranagh had been making only days before. Now begins the great task of reconstructing the ravaged city. The Rebuilding of London Act of 1666 invites radical schemes, the more outlandish and contrasting with the old city, the better. Most suggest a grid system, as will come to be used 200 years later in the rebuilding of Paris and cities across North America. One of the most important things when you've had a devastation like the Great Fire of London, which doesn't happen very often, politically, is to give people hope.

And there were lots of people trying to promote that the city that would emerge, this stone phoenix rising from the ashes, would be greater than anything that had been seen before. This was really put out there. You see lots of poetry kind of celebrating London's renewal and rebirth. Within days, and I mean literal days, you start getting people sending their plans for a new London to the King, to Charles II. And it seems like everyone and anyone sends him a plan. And these plans vary in their complexity and their design. There's one that I love. It was by a man called Valentine Knight, and he gave a plan, which is basically just lines across a page.

He just thought, yeah, we'll just have lines. That's it. But London is not owned by one person, and building control is not what it will one day become. Despite the grand plans, rebuilding begins on the same footprint as the medieval city, with landowners largely constructing whatever they wish. Most people return to the sites of the shops and businesses they owned before the disaster. A new cathedral is designed by Christopher Wren on the site of the old St Paul's, and is now one of London's most iconic landmarks, itself a monument to the fire and to hope. He builds other, smaller churches to replace those lost, 51 in all, scattered throughout the city. He is later knighted, partly in recognition of his services after the events of 1666. The new streets are wider and use less timber. All buildings must be at least faced in stone or brick

to create a safety barrier. Insurance takes off and as well as fire safety, better sanitation is planned as part of the rebuilding. One of the most impressive things I think about the response to the Great Fire of London is the way that the authorities dealt with the very many competing views on as to who owns what and who had a lease on what and they set up this thing called a fire court which was basically a bunch of judges working pro bono to decide on what had been there before and they

worked through these cases hundreds and hundreds of cases and it's a really rich source in terms of who lived where and was doing what and the relationships between different people. Fariner denies the fire was an accident. He is adamant he checked and rechecked his ovens before going to bed. But that's not good enough for the people who have lost everything. Resentment is still sky high, and all that anger needs somewhere to go. Anti-Catholic sentiment has been brewing in England for some time, and has only accelerated since the gunpowder plot 60 years previously.

Catholics, or Papists as they're often known, are the bogeymen of Reformation England. You have to imagine there's all this rage inside people. They've lost so much. This cannot just be an accident. They knew it was an accident. There's definitely

some cognitive dissonance at play here. Most people knew where it started but they needed someone to blame and they found someone to blame in a poor man named Robert Hubert. A French watchmaker, Robert Hubert, confesses to being a spy. He says he started the fire at Westminster.

But when he learns it started at Pudding Lane, he changes his story, stating that he threw a grenade through the bakery window. The ensuing trial attracts much attention. Hubert had never seen the bakery on Pudding Lane, and during evidence, it emerges that Hubert cannot have thrown a grenade through the window because the bakery had no windows at ground level. Hubert is also a Protestant, which blows the Catholic-French spy theory out of the water. And despite his confession, Hubert has a cast-iron alibi. When the blaze started, he was at sea. The captain of the ship he traveled in personally

confirms they didn't even arrive on English shores until two days later. personally confirms they didn't even arrive on English shores until two days later. Now it's commonly believed Hubert had learning disabilities, or was simply a foreigner in the wrong place at the wrong time and the confession was obtained through torture. But with the memory of the inferno still fresh, a scapegoat is required. With three members of Farriner's family on the jury, poor Robert Hubert is found guilty and hanged at Tyburn. In 1677, a monument is built to commemorate the fire. 202 feet tall and 202 feet from the site of the bakery in Pudding Lane, the column can be seen throughout the city. A staircase allows visitors to climb to a viewing platform to watch the city being reborn.

And the central shaft is designed as a scientific instrument, a telescope and a space to provide test conditions for experiments on gravity. provide test conditions for experiments on gravity. So a monument was erected to mark the site of the Great Fire of London and also just as a focal point for people to go to to remember their suffering and on this monument it explicitly blamed papists for the Great Fire despite the fact that everyone knew that it was it had started in Thomas Farriner's bakehouse. And that blame was left on the monument for centuries. The reference to the plot is finally chiseled off in 1830, but other fabrications have persisted much longer. It's commonly believed that by burning the unsanitary houses and the rats that scurry throughout the city,

the Great Fire of London ended the plague. This is identified by the Museum of London as a myth. Another probable myth is the extremely low death toll. Official accounts after the Great Fire of London have half a dozen, maybe eight people, to have died during the Great Fire of London have half a dozen, maybe eight people to have died during the Great Fire of London. I think that's an extremely conservative estimate. I don't think it's possible to know how many people died, but I think it's possible to make informed guesses. And if you look at the parish records, which I have, you can look at the average number of deaths

which I have, you can look at the average number of deaths over the months preceding the fire and during the fire and then after the fire and you can see that there are anomalies there. There are also anomalies in terms of the average age of death during the month of the Great Fire of London with people being older as they die and there not being so many young because you would usually expect to have lots of infant deaths sadly it's a time of higher child mortality and you don't see them in the records so there are question marks there but what i think is the best most sensible measure of the potential number of people to have died is to look to other historical examples and the great fire of chicago even though it was centuries later, it was in the late 19th century, the conditions were very similar in terms of the

population size, in terms of the types of buildings within Chicago at that time, mainly wooden, in terms of the time of year that it happened, and in terms of the fact that there was a wind blowing it. And during that fire, we get around 200 to 300 deaths recorded. Deaths were recorded much better at that point in time. So I would say, and it is a guess, we're probably looking for deaths in the hundreds. Probably not thousands, but hundreds. The Great Fire of London gutted the ancient city.

It forced more Londoners from their homes than any event in history until the blitz of the Second World War. It brought out the most ugly side of human nature, revealing a deep-rooted fear and mistrust of foreigners and Catholics. But it also cleared the way for a more modern city. A city of stone buildings, sanitation, with accurate maps and records. Better regulations and building codes mitigated the risk of future catastrophes. The first insurance companies sprang up from the devastation, and the firefighting teams that followed would eventually grow to form the London Fire Brigade. Now, a hundred thousand people climb the monument every year to look across the city that rose from the ashes.

In one direction is the Tower of London, which held out against the flames. Look the other way, and the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral still stands as a testament to the survivors on the threshold of a new age of enlightenment. Next time on Short History Of... we'll bring you a short history of Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail. And so the existence of this Inca Trail, it was ultimately one of the most imperial features of this civilization. It was a principle of cultural cohesion,

the principle of kinship. That is a principle that because we were one single culture, we could be one single family, we needed to stay connected as such. That's next time on Short History Of. If you're enjoying Noisa podcasts, but would like to hear them without adverts, join Noisa Plus today. As well as ad-free listening to Noisa originals, including Real Dictators, Short History Of, and History Daily, you'll get bonus content and early access to new episodes. Join via the Apple Podcast app, or head to noisa.com to subscribe on Android and other devices.