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On the night of September
2, 1666, a small fire broke out in the premises of a baker's
shop in Pudding Lane, London, perhaps started by the carelessness
of a maid. A journeyman living above the bakery raised the alarm.
The household jumped to safety from the roof – except
for one maid, who became the fire's first victim.
Pudding Lane was
a narrow street of timbered buildings and wattle-and-daub shelters,
many of them housing cook shops. It backed on to Fish Street
Hill, which led to London Bridge, it self lined with buildings
made of plaster and wood. Once fire took hold in Thomas Farryner's
bakery kitchen that night, it spread swiftly.
If it was carelessness,
it was carelessness that had enormous and disastrous consequences,
for the fire spread and soon the whole building was alight.
In the close-packed streets of London, where buildings jostled
each other for space, the blaze soon became an inferno. Fanned
by an east wind, the fire spread with terrifying speed, feeding
on the tar and pitch commonly used to seal houses.
Our best account of
the Fire comes from the diaries of Samuel Pepys, Secretary of
the Admiralty. He watched the course of the destruction from
a safe position across the Thames, and called it, "a most
malicious bloody flame, as one entire arch of fire... of above
a mile long. It made me weep to see it.
The churches, houses,
and all on fire and flaming at once, and a horrid noise the
flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin ...Over
the Thames with one's face in the wind you were almost burned
with a shower of fire drops." Pepys buried his wine and
parmesan cheese to keep those valuable items safe from the flames. |
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