One of the greatest disaster to befall the city of London (aside from the plagues) when, on the evening of 2 September 1666, a fire swept through the city that raged for five days and nights, and destroying more than 13 thousand houses and 87 churches. The most famous victim of the fire was St Paul's Cathedral. This entry is only for historical interest as the event is mentioned in passing elsewhere.
The City of London in the early 17th Cent was a tightly packed conglomerate of narrow streeds lined with wooden houses, most of them several stories high, with the neighbours on the top-most floors being quite easily able to have a conversation without leaving their homes. It was the ideal prey for a fire. 1666 was also a year of severe drought. On the evening of 2 September a baker, Thomas Farriner, had absent-mindedly failed to put out the fire in his downstairs kitchen. Once the fire started the inhabitants of the building had no way of escape except to climb out the windows to their neighbours house; a maidservant, too afraid to attempt the escape, became its first victim.
Despite many attempts to contain the fire by demolishing the surrounding houses to create fire-breaks, the strong winds abetted the fire in its five-day long feast of the wooden carcass that was London, fanning it to a blazing 1,200 to 1400 oC.
Though relatively few persons died in the fire, it chalked up an estamated £10,000,000 (equiv. to about £1.66 billion in 2018) worth of damage. The most unfortunate victim of the fire was Robert Hubert, a French watchmaker, who was falsely convicted of starting the fire and executed.The fire, however, also presented London with an opportunity for a new beginning, and much of modern day London owes its topography to the fire. It also forced the city administrators to reform their city-planning strategies—insisting, e.g., on stone for building instead of wood—as well as entrepreneurs for developing new insurances products.
Later a monument was erected on a site near where the fire started; just outside the Monument London Underground Station.
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