User:Bishonen/Fire holding area
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- Wiki article June 30 2006.
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the City of London from 1666-09-02 to 1666-09-05, and resulted more or less in the destruction of the city. Before this fire, two early fires of London, in 1133/1135 and 1212, both of which destroyed a large part of the city, were known by the same name. Later, the Luftwaffe's fire-raid on the City on 29th December 1940 became known as The Second Great Fire of London.
The fire of 1666 was one of the biggest calamities in the history of London, and came at the end of the Great Plague of London — an outbreak of bubonic plague that killed perhaps hundreds of thousands —the Great Fire is thought to have brought a quicker end to the plague, by killing off any disease-carrying rats and their fleas. However, this is doubtful since the fire was confined to the prosperous business and residential districts, leaving the rat-infested slums intact.[citation needed] It destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, 6 chapels, 44 Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St Paul's Cathedral, the Guildhall, the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons, the Session House, four bridges across the rivers Thames and Fleet, and three city gates, and made homeless 100,000 people, one sixth of the city's inhabitants at that time. The death toll from the fire is unknown, and is traditionally thought to have been quite small, but a recent book theorizes that thousands may have died in the flames or from smoke inhalation. Only six verifiable deaths are recorded.
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[edit] Events
The fire broke out on Sunday morning, September 2, 1666. It started in Pudding Lane at the house of Thomas Farynor, a baker to King Charles II. It is likely that the fire started because Farynor forgot to extinguish his oven before retiring for the evening and that some time shortly after midnight, smouldering embers from the oven set alight some nearby firewood. Farynor managed to escape the burning building, along with his family, by climbing out through an upstairs window. The baker's housemaid failed to escape and became the fire's first victim.
Within an hour of the fire starting, the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, was awakened with the news. He was unimpressed however, declaring that "a woman might piss it out." He then went back to sleep.
Most buildings in London at this time were constructed of highly combustible materials like wood and straw, and sparks emanating from the baker's shop fell onto an adjacent building. Fanned by a strong wind from the east, once the fire had taken hold it swiftly spread. The spread of the fire was helped by the fact that buildings were built very close together with only a narrow alley between them.
[edit] Destruction
The fire consumed a staggering 13,200 houses and 87 churches, among them the beloved St. Paul's Cathedral, which at that time was St. Paul's Church. While only 9–16 people were reported as having died in the fire, author Neil Hanson (The Dreadful Judgement) believes the true death toll numbered in the hundreds or the thousands. Hanson believes most of the fatalities were poor people whose bodies were cremated by the intense heat of the fire, and thus their remains were never found. These claims are controversial, however.
The destructive fury of this conflagration is thought never to have been exceeded in the world, by an accidental fire. Within the walls, it consumed almost five-sixths of the whole city; and without the walls it cleared a space nearly as extensive as the one-sixth part left unburnt within. Scarcely a single building that came within the range of the flames was left standing. Public buildings, churches, and dwelling-houses, were alike involved in one common fate.
In the summary account of this vast devastation, given in one of the inscriptions on the Monument, and which was drawn up from the reports of the surveyors appointed after the fire, it is stated, that:
The ruins of the city were 436 acres (1.8 km²), viz. 333 acres (1.3 km²) within the walls, and 63 acres (255,000 m²) in the liberties of the city; that, of the six-and-twenty wards, it utterly destroyed fifteen, and left eight others shattered and half burnt; and that it consumed 400 streets, 13,200 dwelling-houses, 89 churches [besides chapels]; 4 of the city gates, Guildhall, many public structures, hospitals, schools, libraries, and a vast number of stately edifices.
The value of the property destroyed in the fire has been estimated as exceeding ten million pounds, which corresponds to roughly 1 billion pounds in 2005 money [1]. As well as the buildings, this included irreplaceable treasures such as paintings and books: Pepys, for example, gives an account of the loss of the entire stock (and subsequently the financial ruin) of his own preferred bookseller. Despite the immediate destruction caused by the fire, it is nevertheless claimed that its remote effects have benefitted subsequent generations: for instance, it completed the destruction of the Great Plague which, greatly in decline by 1666, had taken the lives of 68,590 people, the previous year; and it also led to the building of some notable new buildings, such as the new St. Paul's Cathedral.
[edit] Aftermath and consequences
The fire had a marked and varied impact on English society: see, for example, articles concerning Charles II of England, Christopher Wren and Samuel Pepys.
The fire took place during the very expensive Second Anglo-Dutch War. Losses in revenues made it impossible to keep the fleet fully operationable in 1667, leading to the Raid on the Medway by the Dutch. In the Dutch Republic the fire was widely interpreted as a divine retribution for Holmes's Bonfire not a month earlier.
A large fire had already burnt around the northern end of London Bridge in 1632. In 1661, John Evelyn warned of the potential for fire in the city, and in 1664, Charles II wrote to the Lord Mayor of London to suggest that enforcing building regulation would help contain fires.
[edit] Further reading
- Hanson, Neil (2002). The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London. ISBN 0552147893. Released in the U.S. as The Great Fire of London: In That Apocalyptic Year, 1666. ISBN 0471218227.
- Robinson, Bruce. Red Sky at Night. BBC's History website. —an account of the Great Fire.
- Robert Latham and William Matthews (editors). The Diary of Samuel Pepys, a new and complete transcription, published by Bell & Hyman, London, 1970–1983.
[edit] External links
- Fire Dr Simon Thurley, director of the Museum of London, and other experts at the museum answered questions about the Great Fire of London.
[edit] Here be other stuff than the present mainspace article
Monday: Large-scale looting had begun. The courtier Windham Sandys decribed behaviours as determined by social class: "For the first rank, they minded only for their own preservation; the middle sort [were] so distracted and amazed that they did not know what they did; the poorer, they minded nothing but pilfering."[1] By mid afternoon, many were fleeing to the open fields outside the City, such as Moorfields.[2] (Interesting description of location and character of Moorfields in Tinniswood, 104, with quotes from Evelyn and Pepys, though unfortunately from observations on the Wednesday. But Robinson does speak of flight to Moorfields on the Monday. Open civic park lined with brothels. Colourful.)
[edit] Museum of London timeline
Simple timeline from http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/learning/features_facts/tudor_stuart_london_1.html :
Saturday 1 September 1666
- The city is experiencing the end of a hot summer.
- Water levels of the Thames and the city wells are very low.
Sunday 2 September 1666
- 1.30am: A fire starts amongst some wood in Thomas Faryner's bakehouse in Pudding Lane.
- Fanned by an east wind, the fire spreads and jumps all firebreaks.
- 7.00am: Samuel Pepys hears that 300 houses have already burnt down.
- By the afternoon the fire has destroyed the entire waterfront warehousing as far as present day Southwark Bridge. The fire also spreads north towards Cheapside. Londoners begin to flee the City.
Monday 3 September 1666
- The fire gains momentum. It spreads west towards the Fleet River and north beyond Cornhill and the Royal Exchange.
- By order of King Charles II, the Duke of York, the King's brother, is placed in control of the City and uses his guards to try to put out the fire by creating firebreaks.
Tuesday 4 September 1666
- Soldiers from Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Kent are ordered into the City to help fight the fire.
- St Paul's Cathedral burns down. 'The stones of St Pauls flew like grenados, and the lead melted down the streets in a stream ...' (John Evelyn).
- The Guildhall and Bridewell Prison are destroyed by fire.
- In the east of the City, gunpowder is used to make firebreaks and save the Tower of London.
- During the night the wind drops and fire-fighters begin to control the flames.
Wednesday 5 September 1666
- Pepys takes his family to Woolwich as the fire gets close to his home.
- Buildings on Fenchurch Street, Gracechurch Street and Lombard Street are burnt down.
Thursday 6 September 1666
- By morning the Great Fire of London is extinguished.
Friday 7 September 1666
- '... up by five o'clock, and blessed by God! Find all well...' (Samuel Pepys)
- The results of the Great Fire
The fire destroyed about four fifths of the City of London. Only a small area in the north-east survived. The damage included:
13,200 houses St Paul's Cathedral 87 parish churches 6 chapels Bridewell Prison Newgate Prison The Guildhall 3 City gates The Custom House 4 stone bridges Sessions House The Royal Exchange 52 livery company halls
The cost of the fire damage to buildings and their contents was about �10 million. London's yearly income at the time was about �12,000.
Interpretation Unit, Museum of London (ed. Jane Sarre) August 2002
[edit] End of Museum of London quote
What did that matter? Plague article: "Plague cases continued at a modest pace until September 1666." Hmm. I suspect it's being stretched to MAKE the Fire seem significant in ending it. The GREAT Plague was in the summer of '65, surely. This needs checking up. (I think you will find that all major European cities were never completely free of the plague, there were just less occurances and less epidemics at certain times - I've read that somewhere but can't remember where - a book about Venezia I think, I'll try and find it Giano | talk 21:51, 12 August 2006 (UTC))
- OK, darlin', see also the last external link.
- Trained Bands
Hanson, 137. Tinniswood, 105
- Hic est lacuna about how Charles saved the whole refugee effort by providing tents for them (O RLY? where did tents come from? the army must have been using theirs) and issuing proclamations ordering neighboring parishes to provide lodging, and the privileged Corporate Towns to allow the refugees to come there and pursue their trades. 25-27.
[edit] Rebuilding
[edit] National impact
Nationwide xenophobia scare.
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- Prices and supplies
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- Profiteering
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- Labour market
- The Fire Court
However, architecturally Inigo Jones had begun to introduce the palladianism inspired by the late Renaissance architecture of Italy, however these more classically inspired forms of architecture had been arrested by the overthrow of the monarchy. Great changes had begun though before the overthrow of the monarchy, and Jones had added a classical portico, and many other classical motifs to the the principal front of St. Paul's cathedral as early as the 1630s, transforming the cathedral from the dull medieval edifice frequently depicted in contemporary prints. In fact, Wren's plans for the new St Paul's were not as revolutionary as often thought.
Following the fire Christopher Wren was put in charge of re-building the city. His original plans involved rebuilding the city in brick and stone to a grid plan with continental piazzas and long straight avenues, from 1667, Parliament begain raising funds for an ambitious re-building scheme by taxing coal. However, the city was not rebuilt according to Wren's grandiose baroque scheme of a city of long straight streets and piazzas, this was largely due to delaying legal disputes over ownership of land, and the fact that owners of the destroyed shops and houses had to repay for their own rebuilding work. Finaly, subject to certain conditions owners were allowed to retain their former sites. This is the reason today's modern London has a medieval street layout - "Seen in isolation" writes Reddaway, Wren's draft "has bred the story of a great and neglected opportunity. The documents tell a different tale."[3]
[edit] Ethos of Wren's Churches
Wren newly appointed as Surveyor General began to supervise the construction of 57 new churches, much of the design work of which was delegated. The greater part of the cost of replacing the public buildings was met by the City and its companies. [4] Amongst the new designs were plans for the first new churches to have been built in England since the reformation.[5] Wren's new churches were revolutionary in English ecclesiastical architecture in that they ignored the traditional medieval cruciform plan, while externally they resembled the renaissance Roman Catholic churches of Europe internally the renaissance layout was adapted to suit the protestant liturgy. Which unlike that of the Roman Catholic church places greater emphasis on the sermon rather than the ritual taking place at the high altar, hence Wren's churches were basically halls, often with a gallery which allowed everyone to see and hear the preacher thus the chancel became vestigial.
[edit] Diverse
Hey, do you still have access to the DNB? I don't. If you'd like a little job, could you look up William Taswell for me? The 17th-century one. (I think there is a later William Taswell, just ignore him.) My WT wandered about in London and observed the horrors of the fire in 1666, as a 14-year-old schoolboy, and eventually wrote about it in his "autobiography", a short piece. What I'd like to know is when he wrote it down, if anybody knows--obviously, this is a very good source if he kept a journal, less good if he's just remembering/distorting his observations many years later. I like William, he seems like a good kid. He was horrified by the street violence against foreigners that he saw. Was he alone and at a loose end in London? Stuff like that. I know he had been sent home from his school because they had to close on account of the plague.
This is his autobiography: "Autobiography and Anecdotes by William Taswell D.D.", ed. G. P. Elliott, Camden Miscellany II (1853), 1-37. The next thing will perhaps be that one of those clever people who frequent your page (not much like the crowd on mine!) finds it on the web for me (the wandering glass says HINT HINT). Bishonen | talk 20:08, 15 August 2006 (UTC).
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- All hits for "Taswell" in ODNB:
- "Tanswell [formerly Cock], John (1800–1864), lawyer and antiquary, was born at Bedford Square, London, on 3 September 1800, the sixth son of Stephen Cock and his wife, Ann Tanswell (or Taswell), a relative of the Revd William Taswell (d. 1731), rector of St Mary's, Newington, Surrey."
- In the article on Edward Lake (1641–1704), Church of England clergyman: "With his wife, Margaret (1638–1712), Lake had three daughters who survived him, Mary, Ann, and Frances, who married William Taswell DD on 21 May 1695 at St Mary-at-Hill. Taswell later published a collection of sixteen of Lake's sermons."
- "Langmead, Thomas Pitt Taswell- (1840–1882), legal writer, was the only son of Thomas Langmead, gentleman, of St Giles-in-the-Fields, London, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Stephen Cock Taswell, a descendant of an old family formerly settled at Limington, Somerset. He assumed Taswell as an additional surname in 1864." (Seems to be the same family.)
- That's it. (And all three of these ODNB biographees are red links here.) up+land 06:34, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
- All hits for "Taswell" in ODNB:
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- "Clever people" indeed. He scorched his schoolboy shoes on the hot ground near St Pauls, it would seem, 4 days after the fire started.[2] I have found a reference to "Volume LV Miscellany, Vol. II, Camden Society, 1853 - Autobiography and anecdotes, by William Taswell, D.D. sometime rector of Newington, Surrey, rector of Bermondsey, and previously student of Christ Church, Oxford, AD 1651-82, ed. George Percy Elliott"[3] (or you could buy a copy for £12) and someone of the same name was burgled in December 1716 [4] Another William Taswell was at Oxford in the 1570s (cited here) and there seems to an author of a recent history journal article, William Taswell, “Plague and the Fire,” History Today vol. 27 No. 12 (December 1977) pp 812-817 here. -- ALoan (Talk) 00:22, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
the conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures without at all attempting to save even their goods, such a strange consternation there was upon them; so as it burned both in breadth and length the churches, public halls, Exchange, hospitals, monuments and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner from house to house and street to street, at great distances from one from the other, for the heat with a long set of fair and warm weather had even ignited the air, and prepared the materials to conceive the fire, which devoured after an incredible manner, houses, furniture and everything.
In the chaos and unrest after the fire, Charles II feared another London rebellion, and therefore encouraged the homeless to move away from London and settle elsewhere.
Move?-->In strong contrast to the ill-regulated and poverty-stricken suburbs, the City had high citizen participation in local government and a low crime rate, with one thousand watchmen patrolling the streets. Self-reliant community procedures for dealing with sudden emergencies such as fire were in place and were usually effective.
Driven by the wind, the flames leapt easily between the tinder-dry timbered buildings across the narrow lanes between them, while firefighters struggled towards the centre of destruction through panicking crowds fleeing in the opposite direction.
Providing for the refugees and calming public hysteria about scapegoats and invasion were the first urgencies; only then could rebuilding be planned for.[6]
