The Worst Day in London’s History

London Calling.

London Walks connecting.

This is London.

This is London Walks.

And today is September 4th.

Story time.

History time.

And today we’re going back exactly 360 years.

September 4th, 1666.

And I’m going to make a case for it.

The case that this was one of the worst days in the entire history of London.

Maybe the worst.

Because this is the day the Great Fire reached its terrible crescendo.

The fire had started two days earlier.

One o’clock in the morning, September 2nd.

Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane.

And by September 4th it had been burning for more than 48 hours.

Think about that.

Two days.

Two nights.

And it was getting worse.

Much worse.

Samuel Pepys is up at the break of day.

Not sightseeing.

Not diary-writing.

Saving his stuff.

Getting what remains of his possessions out of the path of the fire.

He hires a lighter, a small cargo boat, and starts loading.

It takes until the afternoon.

And then he goes into

Street.

And there it is.

Coming towards him.

Fire on both sides of that narrow street.

Pepys calls it ‘infinite fury’.

People’s belongings have simply been thrown into the gutters.

Trays.

Dishes.

Shovels.

Anything they can get out.

His friend Sir William Batten has a more pressing problem.

His wine.

How do you save your wine from the Great Fire of London?

You bury it.

He digs a pit in his garden and puts the wine into it.

Pepys thinks, good idea.

And buries some Admiralty papers there as well.

So somewhere beneath the catastrophe there’s a little time capsule.

Wine and government paperwork.

Very London.

But over in the City things are becoming almost unimaginable.

Six o’clock in the morning.

The fire reaches Cheapside.

And that matters.

Cheapside isn’t some little medieval backstreet.

Cheapside is one of the great arteries of London.

The great shopping street.

The commercial heart of the City.

And now it’s burning.

The fire takes Guildhall.

London’s great civic headquarters.

It reaches the Old Bailey.

Newgate.

Warwick Lane.

Watling Street.

Ludgate Hill.

Fleet Street.

It gets as far west as the Inner Temple.

Think of that geographical spread.

The Tower at one end.

The Temple at the other.

London is burning from one side to the other.

And people are getting out.

Across the Thames, John Evelyn watches them.

The river is covered with boats loaded with possessions.

On land, carts are heading out towards the fields.

Furniture.

Clothes.

Goods.

Anything people can carry.

And outside the City, the fields are filling with refugees.

Londoners who yesterday had houses.

Today they have whatever they managed to carry out.

And then comes the moment.

The great set piece of September 4th, 1666.

St Paul’s.

Not our St Paul’s.

Not Wren’s magnificent domed cathedral.

Old St Paul’s.

The enormous medieval cathedral that had stood there for hundreds of years.

And surely St Paul’s would be safe.

It was stone.

It stood in an open churchyard.

So safe, people thought, that London’s booksellers and stationers had been carrying their stock there.

Books.

Paper.

Manuscripts.

All put inside for safekeeping.

Which, as it turns out, is roughly equivalent to storing petrol in your fireproof safe.

Because there’s another problem.

St Paul’s is being repaired.

And around that enormous stone cathedral is wooden scaffolding.

And up on the roof, wooden boards.

At about eight o’clock that evening, burning material is carried through the air.

It lands on the roof.

And Old St Paul’s catches fire.

Just stop there for a moment.

Imagine standing somewhere around Ludgate Hill.

And looking up.

The cathedral of London is burning.

John Evelyn saw what happened.

And he gives us one of the great eyewitness descriptions in London history.

The stones of St Paul’s, he says, flew like grenades.

The lead on the roof melted.

It ran down the streets.

Molten metal.

And the pavements themselves became so hot that neither horse nor man could walk on them.

And down below, in St Faith’s beneath the cathedral, all those books that had been carried there for safety were burning.

Some of them would burn for days.

The medieval St Paul’s was finished.

Gone.

And still the fire was moving.

There was now a horrifying possibility at the eastern end of London.

The Tower.

Because the Tower of London wasn’t just a castle.

It contained gunpowder.

Lots of it.

Fire reaching the great stores of gunpowder at the Tower.  Doesn’t bear thinking about.

And immediately beyond the Tower lay Wapping. A riverside world of sailors and ships, wharves and moorings, sailmakers, anchor-smiths, timber yards. Timber. Tar. Pitch. Rope.

Everything a fire could possibly want.

And here we get one of the great ironies of the Great Fire.

What finally helps stop fire?

Explosions.

Gunpowder is used to blow up houses.

Not because those houses are burning.

Because they aren’t.

That’s the point.

You deliberately destroy buildings ahead of the flames.

Create a gap.

A firebreak.

Nothing left for the fire to eat.

All day London has been losing.

And then, late that night, something changes.

Not a king.

Not a lord mayor.

Not a firefighter.

The weather.

At about eleven o’clock the wind changes direction.

The great easterly wind that has been driving the flames through London begins to lose its grip.

And finally, finally, the fire begins to weaken.

September 4th is ending.

London is still burning.

But the battle has turned.

And perhaps John Evelyn gets the last word.

Because on September 4th, looking at Fleet Street, the Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Newgate, Watling Street and St Paul’s burning, he concludes that human beings can do nothing more.

‘Vain was the help of man.’

That’s September 4th, 1666.

London’s worst day.

And London’s still here.

Which brings us to our word of the day.

Cathedral.

We know what a cathedral is.

Big church.

Important church.

Except that isn’t actually what the word means.

It comes ultimately from the Greek kathedra.

A seat.

A chair.

Specifically, the bishop’s chair.

His cathedra.

That’s what makes a cathedral a cathedral.

Not its size.

Not its dome.

Not its towers.

The chair.

A cathedral is the church containing the bishop’s seat.

And on September 4th, 1666, London lost one cathedral.

Out of its ashes would come another.

Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s.

The great dome.

The London skyline we know.

And there’s a London Walks thought to finish with.

When you stand outside St Paul’s today, you’re not just looking at one of London’s greatest buildings.

You’re standing on the scene of September 4th, 1666.

Under your feet is another London.

The London that burned.

And above it stands the London that rose again.

London Calling.

London Walks connecting.

See you tomorrow.