 Thomas Farryner had a bakery in Pudding Lane. He was known around London as the King's Baker.  He needed to keep his ovens at a steady high temperature, so he kept lots of dry wood in his kitchen.  At about two o'clock in the morning of Sunday 2nd September, this wood caught fire.

 By Monday, the people of London could hardly see their city for smoke. The fire was spreading fast through the city. London Bridge was alight, and 300 houses had burned down. That night, the sky was so bright, it looked like daytime. On Tuesday, the fire was so hot that people could not get close enough to put it out. St Paul’s Cathedral, London's most famous building, catches fire. Approximate damage by the evening of Sunday, 2. September

 The summer of 1666 was hot and long, and by September most of London was tinder dry.  Almost all the houses were built with wooden frames. These are known as timber-framed houses. Some houses had thatched roofs.  A strong east wind blew, sending the flames of the fire from house to house across the very narrow streets.  Many buildings were werehouses which stored barrels of brandy and spirits and oil which are very flammable.  The barrels exploded in the heat and threw balls of flame out of windows and doors.

3. September September Fire details: The fire, fed not merely by wood, fabrics, and thatch, but also by the oil, pitch, coal, tallow, fats, sugar, alcohol, turpentine, and gunpowder stored in the riverside district, melted the imported steel lying along the wharves (melting point between 1,250 °C and 1,480 °C and the great iron chains and locks on the City gates (melting point between 1,100 °C and 1,650 °C)

 By Wednesday 5th September, the wind changed direction, and the fire stopped spreading.There was no fire brigade at the time of the Great Fire, so the King took charge in fighting the fire.  Special 'fire-posts' were created and fire-fighting equipment were sent to them. Soldiers were sent in to help.  The King ordered houses to be knocked down, so the fire could not spread.  Water from the river, fountains and wells were passed in buckets along lines of men and thrown on the fire. Syringes were also used by watchmen.

 Samuel Pepys worked for the navy and as a Member of Parliament. He was an eyewitness to the events of the Great Fire. At the time of the Great Fire, he lived in Seethings Lane, which was close to the Tower of London.  He wrote about his daily life in his diaries for ten years, and they tell us about life in London in the 1660s. He wrote his diaries with a quill by candlelight.  As the flames of the Great Fire got closer to his house, he wrote in his diary that he had decided to bury in his garden the most important things in his life. These were his wine, his papers and his parmesan cheese, which was very expensive in 1666.

 The Great Fire of London lasted for five days. It had burned 13,200 houses, 87 churches, 44 Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons, the General Letter Office. About 200,000 people were left homeless.  The monetary value of the loss, first estimated at £100,000,000 in the currency of the time, was later reduced to an uncertain £10,000,000 (over £1 billion in pounds).  London had been devastated by the fire, so King Charles asked the great architects to build a new city.  One architect, Christopher Wren, planned a cleaner and healthier city, with houses built of brick and stone, and with no wooden buildings allowed. Christopher Wren’s new city plan.

 St Paul’s Cathedral was rebuilt. It still stands today, although parts of it has altered.  The Monument commemorates the Great Fire. Its height is 61½ metres tall – the distance it stands from the site of Thomas Farryner’s bakery in Pudding Lane.

  ndon  en  opracował: mgr Krzysztof Tylus