Londons burning!In 1666, London was a city just waiting to burn.

Londons burning!

In 1666, London was a city just waiting to burn. Narrow streets were overcrowded with buildings. Open fires and candles burned inside homes and businesses. A long, hot summer had just come to an end, and the wood-built city was bone dry. On the evening of Saturday, 1 st September, Thomas Farynor, baker to King Charles II, went to bed without properly putting out the fire in one of his ovens. Sometime after 1:00 am on Sunday morning, a spark from the fire's embers ignited some straw on the bakery floor. Flames quickly engulfed the house in Pudding Lane Neighbours attempted to put out the fire, but the flames were too fierce. The fire began to spread.

At 4:00 am London's mayor, sir Thomas Bloodworth, was woken up. He was advised to have all the neighbouring houses demolished, as this would stop the fire spreading, but the Mayor refused to give the order. He paid dearly for this decision. By early morning, three hundred houses were on fire and winds from the east were causing the fire to spread with frightening speed.

Over the next three days and nights, the fire raged out of control. It took until the evening of Wednesday, 5th September, when the strong winds finally died down, to bring the fire under control. When the fire was totally extinguished on Thursday, 6th September, five-sixths of the heart of the city had been destroyed. Over 13,000 houses, 87 churches and 4 bridges, along with many important buildings, such as St Paul's Cathedral, were gone. Astonishingly, however, it is thought that fewer than ten people died in the blaze!

If you visit London today, you can see а tall column - called The Monument -commemorating the Great Fire. It stands at 220 feet tall - the distance from its location to the site of Thomas Farynor's bakery - so if it fell over in the right direction, it would point to the exact spot where the fire started!



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