On 2nd September 1666, a fire broke out in a bakery in Pudding Lane in the City of London. Fanned by a breeze, the fire quickly spread throughout the whole city. Apart from pulling down buildings to create "firebreaks", there was no way of stopping it. The fire raged for four days until it finally burned itself out. More than 13,000 buildings, including St Paul’s Cathedral, were destroyed. Around 70,000 of the City of London’s 80,000 citizens had lost their homes in the blaze.

London in the 1600s

In the 1600s London was by far the largest city in Britain. The City, in the very heart of London, was an overcrowded warren of narrow alleys. Many of the houses were built with wood and had thatched roofing. They leant out over the narrow streets, almost touching the houses opposite.

In 1666 there were only two real ways to fight a fire. One was using fire squirts. These worked like large syringes. But they were slow to operate and contained only a few litres of water. The other way was to pull down the buildings ahead of the fire, by using special "fire hooks". This created a gap between the buildings, called a firebreak. It stopped the flames leaping from one house to another.

The flames spread

Very early on Sunday morning, Samuel Pepys (pronounced "Peeps"), Chief Secretary to the Admiralty, who lived only a few streets away, was woken by his maid. He went to the window to see for himself. The fire did not worry him especially, and he went back to bed. But his maid woke him again at 7.00 a.m. to tell him things had got much worse.

Pepys went to the Tower of London and took a boat out on to the River Thames to observe the fire. To his horror, he watched London's houses, churches and buildings being destroyed by flames. People scrambled to save their possessions, loading them into boats on the river.

The king takes charge

Pepys hurried to Whitehall to tell King Charles II about the fire. The king immediately commanded the Lord Mayor to order the destruction of as many houses as was needed to create firebreaks. Bloodworth had been reluctant to pull down houses of rich merchants without the owners’ consent. While the mayor dithered, the strong wind had enabled the fire to jump from house to house.

After the fire

After the fire, much of the City was destroyed. Tens of thousands of people were made homeless. But there were some good things that came out of the fire, too. It had wiped out the open sewers and slums that had made the City of London so unpleasant and disease-ridden. Now there was the opportunity to rebuild the City with safer, stronger buildings made of brick. The architect Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723) oversaw a huge rebuilding project to restore London, including the reconstruction of St Paul's Cathedral.