The Great Fire of London: An Illustrated History of the Great Fire of 1666

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A special Fire Court was set up from February 1667 to December 1668, and again from 1670 to February 1676. The aim of the court, which was authorized by the Fire of London Disputes Act and the Rebuilding of London Act 1670, was to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. Cases were heard and a verdict usually given within a day; without the Fire Court, lengthy legal proceedings would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was so necessary if London was to recover. [132] [133] Hanson, 77–80. The section "Fire hazards in the City" is based on Hanson, 77–101 unless otherwise indicated. The Great Fire of London, depicted by an unknown painter (1675), as it would have appeared from a boat in the vicinity of Tower Wharf on the evening of Tuesday, 4 September 1666. To the left is London Bridge; to the right, the Tower of London. Old St Paul's Cathedral is in the distance, surrounded by the tallest flames. Central London in 1666, with the burnt area shown in pink and outlined in dashes ( Pudding Lane origin [a] marked with a green line)

The fears of terrorism received an extra boost from the disruption of communications and news. The General Letter Office in Threadneedle Street, through which post passed for the entire country, burned down early on Monday morning. The London Gazette just managed to put out its Monday issue before the printer's premises went up in flames. [75] Suspicions rose to panic and collective paranoia on Monday, and both the Trained Bands and the Coldstream Guards focused less on fire fighting and more on rounding up foreigners and anyone else appearing suspicious, arresting them, rescuing them from mobs, or both. [76] [77] That could almost stand for a good phrase to describe the people in this novel. These are the London lost, the London lonely, the London mad - the city's victims, the city's prisoners. By the 1660s, London was by far the largest city in Britain and the third largest in the Western world, estimated at 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants. [6] [7] John Evelyn, contrasting London to the Baroque magnificence of Paris in 1659, called it a "wooden, northern, and inartificial congestion of Houses". [8] By "inartificial", Evelyn meant unplanned and makeshift, the result of organic growth and unregulated urban sprawl. [9] London had been a Roman settlement for four centuries and had become progressively more crowded inside its defensive city wall. It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into extramural settlements such as Shoreditch, Holborn, Cripplegate, Clerkenwell and Southwark, and the Inns of Court. To the West it reached along Strand to the Royal Palace and Abbey at Westminster. [9] [10] According to Jacob Field, "the reaction to the Fire revealed England's long-standing hostility to Catholics, which manifested itself most visibly at times of crisis". [120] Allegations that Catholics had started the fire were exploited as powerful political propaganda by opponents of pro-Catholic Charles II's court, mostly during the Popish Plot and the exclusion crisis later in his reign. [151] [120] The Royalist perspective of the fire as accidental was opposed by the Whig view questioning the loyalties of Catholics in general and the Duke of York in particular. [152]Low, Rachael, ed. (2013) [1950]. The History of British Film. Vol.2 (reprinted.). Routledge. p.191. The human habitations were crowded, and their design increased the fire risk. The typical multistory timbered London tenement houses had " jetties" (projecting upper floors). They had a narrow footprint at ground level, but maximised their use of land by "encroaching" on the street with the gradually increasing size of their upper storeys. [21] The fire hazard was well perceived when the top jetties all but met across the narrow alleys—"as it does facilitate a conflagration, so does it also hinder the remedy", wrote one observer. [22] In 1661, Charles II issued a proclamation forbidding overhanging windows and jetties, but this was largely ignored by the local government. Charles's next, sharper message in 1665 warned of the risk of fire from the narrowness of the streets and authorised both imprisonment of recalcitrant builders and demolition of dangerous buildings. It too had little impact. [23] Minott-Ahl, Nicola (September 2006). "Building Consensus: London, the Thames, and Collective Memory in the Novels of William Harrison Ainsworth". Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London. 4 (2).

a b c d e Hebbert, Michael (2020). "The long after-life of Christopher Wren's short-lived London plan of 1666". Planning Perspectives. 35 (2): 231–252. doi: 10.1080/02665433.2018.1552837.Hmm. We must command the Lord Mayor to pull down all the houses in front of the fire, so it has no fuel to burn, then the fire will die down. Carlson, Jennifer Anne (September 2005). "The economics of fire protection: from the Great Fire of London to Rural/Metro". Economic Affairs. 25 (3): 39–44. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0270.2005.00570.x. Toby and The Great Fire of London by Margaret Nash – a simple story (under 400 words) with lots of great pictures. Rege Sincera (pseudonym), Observations both Historical and Moral upon the Burning of London, September 1666, quoted by Hanson, 80 The lesson could be expanded to ask pupils to attempt a piece of writing on the fire such as a diary entry.