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On the morning of 6 September 1666, fires still burned across London. However, they were either contained or such that could be put out one-by-one. The Great Fire of London, as a single conflagration, had been tamed. At this point, it was possible to begin reckoning the extent of the damage. Mercifully, very few people, perhaps just half a dozen in fact, had lost their...
As dawn broke on Wednesday 5 September 1666, 355 years ago today, some 60 per cent of the city of London had been laid waste by the greatest fire ever to have engulfed England's biggest and most important city. We have already seen how, on the previous day, things had begun to move in the Londoners' favour. By blowing up entire streets with gunpowder, those fighting the...
When they woke on Tuesday 4 September 1666, Londoners must have felt like they had spent the last two days in hell. Incredibly, things would get worse before they got better. The king, the duke of York and many of London's aldermen and governors continued to lead the containment operation from the front, but the fire seemed unstoppable. By the end of this third day,...
As morning broke on this day 355 years ago, few Londoners had slept well. Certainly, Samuel Pepys was up at 4am, with the rest of his household, loading his possessions into a cart to remove them from London. Even at that hour, the streets were crowded with people doing the same. There had been no respite from the fire overnight and more Londoners faced the...
355 years ago today, Samuel Pepys was woken by Jane, one of his maids, at 3 o’clock in the morning. Pepys was no stranger to nocturnal liaisons with the staff, but this was no time for a fumble. Jane had seen ‘a great fire’ close to London Bridge and she was worried enough to wake her master. Pepys pulled on a nightgown, went to his...
As is well known, London was destroyed by fire in September 1666. By the time the conflagration had ended, some eighty-seven parish churches, along with St Paul's Cathedral, were no more. All the city's main public buildings, including the Royal Exchange and Guildhall, as well as forty-four livery companies' halls were smoking ruins. Over 13,000 private homes, too, had been razed to the ground. The...
Angers is a pretty, prosperous city in the province formerly known as Anjou in western France. Unlike Cologne, Antwerp or Amsterdam, it is not a city which one immediately connects with the history of London. True, for a brief period in the Middle Ages, three kings of England, Henry II, Richard I and John were also the counts of Anjou, but there is little evidence...
At the end of each month, Samuel Pepys, the great diarist, was wont to take stock of his affairs. Anyone who has read Pepys’s diary cannot help but be struck by his invariable cheerfulness on these occasions. His entry for 30 April 1665, 354 years ago today, was typical of the man: ‘thus I end the month: in great content as to my estate and...
