Bankside, Southwark

The best view was from the wrong side of the river

At dusk on Sunday 2 September 1666, when they could bear no more of the smoke and sparks on the water, Samuel Pepys and his companions went to "a little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes," and stayed there until it was almost dark, watching the City of London burn across the Thames.

The fire had broken out shortly after midnight in Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane. Driven by a strong east wind after a long, dry summer, by evening it ran along the riverfront from the Three Cranes, opposite Pepys, to beyond London Bridge. He saw it as "one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long," and wrote that it made him weep.

A pair of virginals in every third boat

Pepys noticed what people saved. The river was crowded with lighters and small boats loaded with household goods, and hardly one in three, he wrote, was without a pair of virginals, a small keyboard instrument. He watched pigeons that would not leave their houses, hovering at windows and balconies until their wings burned. On the water, facing the wind, he was almost burned by a shower of firedrops.

The houses at the City end of London Bridge were alight, but Southwark was spared: an open space between the buildings on the bridge acted as a firebreak.

Four days that emptied the City

The fire burned until Wednesday 5 September. The Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, hesitated to order houses pulled down while it was still small. By Tuesday it had leapt the River Fleet and reached Old St Paul's, which was wrapped in wooden scaffolding for repairs directed by Christopher Wren. The scaffolding caught, and within half an hour the lead roof was melting.

The wind dropped on Tuesday evening, and gunpowder firebreaks blown by the Tower garrison held on Wednesday. Between 13,200 and 13,500 houses were lost, with 86 or 87 parish churches, 44 livery company halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House and St Paul's. Only a handful of deaths were recorded. The real toll is unknown.

Why English children start their history here

The Great Fire is the first national event most English children study, named in the Key Stage 1 curriculum and told through Pepys's diary. It also made the London they know. Wren built a new St Paul's and 51 new City churches, and with Robert Hooke designed the Monument near Pudding Lane, 202 feet tall, built between 1671 and 1676.

The Monument also records a search for scapegoats. In 1681 an inscription blaming Catholics for the fire was added to it, and it stayed until after the Catholic Relief Act of 1829. A French watchmaker, Robert Hubert, had confessed to starting the fire despite doubts about his fitness to plead, and was hanged at Tyburn on 29 October 1666.

Sources

• Wikipedia (en): Great Fire of London
• pepysdiary.com
• gov.uk