The Great Fire Of London 1666

This Is The Great Fire Of London 1666 Story

Those who survived the Great Plague of 1665 must have thought that the year 1666 could not have been worse! Poor souls… they could not have imagined the tragedy that was about to fall on them.

On September 2, a fire started in the King's bakery in Pudding Lane near London Bridge. This rapidly spread to Thames Street, where warehouses packed with combustibles and a heavy wind from the East turned the blaze into an inferno. After days of stuggles the Great Fire was finally extinguished on September 6. By then more than four-fifths of London was ashes. Miraculously, Only around half a dozen people were recorded to have died. 

Sunday, September 2, 1666

In Thomas Fairness pudding Lane bakery is now almost one o'clock in the morning on Sunday, September 2. Everything's quiet in Pudding Lane. The foreigners finally went to bed an hour ago. The 23-year-old daughter Hannah was the last to go to sleep after getting in light for a candle. 

Later the Fairness would insist that everything was absolutely normal when Hannah went downstairs at midnight and that the fire in their oven was definitely out. But they would say that, wouldn't they?

We now believe the most likely cause of The Great Fire was a stray ember which ignited a pile of twigs stored in a bakehouse. Unnoticed, it started to take hold.

Thomas Farriner teenage son and apprentice, also called Thomas woke up. He realised the ground floors on fire and immediately woke up his family who was sleeping upstairs. Trapped by the smoke, their only escape route was to crawl out of an upstairs window and onto a neighbour's roof, raising the alarm at the tops of their voices. This corner of London sprang into life, as people around Pudding Lane realised they were facing their most terrifying enemy: Fire. Continue...