The Great Fire of London began in a bakery
On this day · 2 September 1666
One unswept oven on Pudding Lane set off a blaze that burned four-fifths of medieval London to the ground.
Shortly after midnight on September 2, 1666, fire broke out in the Pudding Lane bakery of Thomas Farriner, baker to the king. Embers left in the oven are thought to have caught the dry fuel and flour stored nearby.
London was perfect kindling: timber houses crammed together, a long dry summer, and a brisk wind off the Thames. With no organized fire brigade, residents fought back with little more than leather buckets, hand squirts, and axes, tools that barely slowed the flames.
The fire raged for several days, finally checked around September 5. It destroyed an estimated 13,200 houses and 87 parish churches, including the old St. Paul’s Cathedral, leaving roughly four-fifths of the walled city in ashes.
Astonishingly, the recorded death toll was tiny, only a handful of confirmed victims.
From the ruins rose a new London of brick and stone, and the tall Monument that still marks where it all started.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
