Fire! Fire! (7 page)

HISTORICAL
NOTE

The Great Fire of London started at one o'clock in the morning on Sunday 2nd September 1666 in a baker's shop that stood on a street called Pudding Lane. By seven o'clock the same morning, Samuel Pepys was woken by his maid to be told that over three hundred houses had already been burnt down.

Pepys decided that the king must be told about the situation and at ten o'clock he travelled to the Palace of Whitehall. He told Charles II about the terrible fire and recommended that houses should be pulled down to stop it spreading further. The king agreed and sent Pepys to tell the Lord Mayor, Thomas Bloodworth, to demolish all buildings in the path of the flames.

By one o'clock in the morning of Monday 3rd September, the fire had spread and the post office on Cloak Lane was destroyed. The postmaster and his family had to run for their lives, taking as much post
with
them as they could carry. The king's brother, the Duke of York, was put in charge of the efforts to stop the fire and he called in the army to help in the fight against the flames.

But many other people helped too; the headmaster of Westminster School led his schoolboys in a successful battle to save the church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-East. Even so, the fire continued to spread and by nine o'clock a huge area of the city has been destroyed and the flames were less than 300 metres away from the Tower of London. The king then ordered as many fire-engines as could be spared to save it.

By this time hundreds of houses, dozens of churches and even Baynard's Castle had been destroyed by the flames. Then on 4th September the area of Cheapside – one of the richest streets in the entire city – caught fire. The king's mother, Henrietta Maria, was forced to leave her home and seek safety in the palace of Hampton Court.

More and more houses, churches and official buildings were burnt to the ground, and then at eight o'clock in the evening, the huge Saint Paul's Cathedral caught fire and was destroyed.

Early
the next morning on September 5th, Samuel Pepys fled from his house in Seething Lane and went to Woolwich. But then, at last, a fire at Holborn Bridge was successfully put out and by seven o'clock that evening all fires in the west of the city were extinguished, apart from one in an area called Cripplegate.

The next day at five o'clock in the morning, Pepys led a group of sailors to fight a blaze in Bishops Gate. This was the last outbreak of the fire and by the next day, September 7th 1666, the Great Fire of London was finally out.

Now began the process of clearing away the debris of all the destroyed buildings, and on September 11th the architect Sir Christopher Wren presented plans to the king for the rebuilding of the city. His crowning achievement would be the new Saint Paul's Cathedral, which would rise again from the ashes.

By November 20th the streets of London were cleared of all debris and the rebuilding could begin. Even so, many people had lost their homes and their businesses and it would be years before the re-building was completed. How long the process would take can be seen in the fact that the new Saint Paul's Cathedral
wasn't
re-opened for worship until 2nd December 1697, thirty-two years and three months after the Great Fire that had destroyed the earlier building.

But the greatest cost could have been the people who died in the flames. Official figures claimed that only six people were killed in the fire, but some historians believe that the numbers of fatalities must have been far higher. Reports at the time simply didn't record the deaths of ordinary working class people.

In addition to this, some figures have claimed that as many as 100,000 people were left homeless as thousands of houses were destroyed. Alhough temporary shelters were built, they were of poor quality and it's believed that large numbers of people would have died of the cold in the harsh winter that followed the fire.

Many shops and other businesses were also destroyed by the flames, which meant countless people lost their jobs and their ability to earn money. This led to extreme poverty at a time when there were very few organised ways to help them.

While
this book is based on real characters and actual historical events, some situations and people are fictional, created by the author.

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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2016

This electronic edition published 2016

Text © Stuart Hill, 2016

Cover image © Mike Love, 2016

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eISBN 978 1407 17814 1

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