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Thomas Farriner was the king’s baker and it is possible that King Charles liked marmalade on the royal slice of bread
(read some poems by a guy called A A Milne who wrote Winnie the Pooh to understand this). However on the night of 2 September Mr Farriner had popped off to bed
early, leaving his maid to put out the ovens in his shop in the rather aptly named Pudding Lane. She forgot. Sometime during the night the hot ovens caused
sparks to set fire to the wooden bakery which was actually also the baker’s home. Wood burns quickly and this wood was no different to that.
It is said, though sadly no one can ever ask her, that the maid tried to climb out the window but she failed and died in the house. Once the fire
started it was away. It was September, summer had been really hot, everywhere was dry and most houses were wood. Also it was windy.
The Lord Mayor, when told about the fire, didn’t seem too worried. Others, with slightly more brain, were. Those who could get out of the city did.
Many went and gathered on Hampstead Heath. Had they still been there 300 years later, unlikely I know, they would have spotted me and my fellow school friends
running 4½ miles as part of our cross country running every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. Actually I only did it twice when we had to as part of a team
competition as I preferred running around the rugby field.
Anyway, back to the fire. The King, who had left London when the
plague started but had now come back, didn’t leave this time. In fact he took control of things and ordered men to create fire breaks. This would be an area of
nothing so the fire couldn’t spread. To make these breaks, men had to knock down perfectly good buildings, destroying even more, but not allowing the fire to
reach new wooden buildings. The King also said that food intended for the navy should be given to those who were now homeless. Good chap old Charles you know.
The heat was so great that the lead on church roofs melted. The biggest fear was that the fire would spread over the River Thames to the south side
of London, using the wooden bridge, with shops and houses on, to get across. Luckily, the wind changed direction and started blowing the flames back to where
they had started and where there was nothing left to burn.
The fire lasted four days and two-thirds of the city was destroyed. 14000 buildings gone, 84 churches and the old St Pauls Cathedral. But the fire
had also destroyed the filthy streets where the poor lived. It had set fire to small rivers which had really just been sewers. Slums were burned away and,
incredibly, it is reckoned that only 5 people lost their lives. However, this cannot be taken too accurately as many of the poor had no relatives, no one knew
who or where they were, so they could have died in the flames and no one have ever known.
Meanwhile, our good friend Mr Pepys wrote about it in his diary, “September 2nd: Jane (his maid) comes and tells us that she hears that above 300
houses have been burned down by the fire…..poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats or
clambering from one pair of stairs by the waterside, to another. I saw a fire as one entire arch of fire above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The
churches, houses are all on fire and flaming at once, and a horrid noise the flames made and the cracking of the houses.”
Within three weeks an architect called Christopher Wren had submitted plans for rebuilding much of the city. Now I don’t know about you but that
seems mighty quick and, in our modern world, somebody would be suggesting Mr Wren had organised the fire in order to get himself some work, which seems to show
what a sad and suspicious world we live in, although I think there is good reason for this attitude nowadays. Wren’s plans were never fully followed but he was
responsible for rebuilding 50 churches and, of course, St Paul’s Cathedral which was finally completed in 1710.
On 2 December 1697, just over 31 years after the Great Fire destroyed the old St Paul's, the new cathedral was consecrated for use. The first regular
service was held on the following Sunday. It was the tallest building in London until about 1963.
I’ve put a few photos below for you to look at; all of buildings designed by Wren. The first two pictures are of St Paul’s Cathedral. I was really
lucky when I first started work in 1968 because the office I worked in was in Cheapside, right in the heart of London. I would walk past St Pauls most lunch
times or take a walk down to the River Thames and have lunch on an old paddle steamer that was moored by London Bridge. I wonder if it is still there? Inside
the cathedral you can also climb some stairs and walk around inside the dome. This is known as the whispering gallery because if you say something they say the
sound will travel all the way around the gallery. I also stood on those steps with a lot of famous people when I went to a memorial service, in 1970, for my hero,
Bruce McLaren.
The first picture on the second row is the monument which Wren designed to commemorate the fire. It is 62 metres tall and 62 metres away from the
place in Pudding Lane where the fire started. I guess that if it ever fell over, the tip would be where Mr Farriner’s bakers shop was. Of course it would have
to fall in the right direction. You can go to the top of the monument, which I have done, by climbing 311 stone steps and that is the only way back too. Once
you get your legs back working again, the view from the top is superb.
The last picture shows the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, also a Wren design. You may know we have Greenwich Mean Time and countries to the east
are ahead of GMT while countries to the west are behind GMT. The Greenwich Meridian runs right through the observatory. For example, when it is noon in England (GMT),
it is 1.00pm in France and 9.00am in Brazil. Sometimes it gets complicated because countries put their clocks forward in spring and back in autumn. I have some sons
living in New Zealand and in our summer I can ring them at 10.00am in my morning and it is 9.00pm in their night the same day. In winter if I ring them at 10.00am my
time, it is 11.00pm their time and they get a bit cross because I have woken them up.
Update: An academic, Dorian Gerhold who was doing some
research on old London Buildings, has found good evidence that Mr Farriner's bakery shop may not have been in Pudding Lane as we all believed. It was still
62 metres from where the monument was built but actually the oven was located on what is now the cobbled surface of Monument Street, 60 feet east of Pudding
Lane, as shown in the photo. As I said his evidence is good and, in fact, the monument bears a plaque which only says it was built 202 feet (62 metres) from
where the fire started. This is why history, although about things which have already happened, can be so much fun and not boring and unchanging like some
people say. I guess the next thing to do is find out why someone, or some people, decided the bakery was in Pudding Lane. Off you go then; time for some
good research. When was Pudding Lane first mentioned? Did Samuel Pepys say that was where it started? I'm sure you can think of more questions.
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