![]() Panic began to spread through the city.Īs the fire raged on, people tried to leave the city and poured down to the River Thames in an attempt to escape by boat.Ībsolute chaos reigned, as often happens today, as thousands of ‘sightseers’ from the villages came to view the disaster. Efforts to bring the fire under control by using buckets quickly failed. The fire swept through the warren of streets lined with houses, the upper stories of which almost touched across the narrow winding lanes. The fire soon took hold: 300 houses quickly collapsed and the strong east wind spread the flames further, jumping from house to house. However that summer had been very hot and there had been no rain for weeks, so consequently the wooden houses and buildings were tinder dry. Indeed, when the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth was woken up to be told about the fire, he replied “Pish! A woman might piss it out!”. ![]() Fires were quite a common occurrence in those days and were soon quelled. Poor souls… they could not have imagined the new disaster that was to befall them in 1666.Ī fire started on September 2nd in the King’s bakery in Pudding Lane near London Bridge. ![]() The people of London who had managed to survive the Great Plague in 1665 must have thought that the year 1666 could only be better, and couldn’t possibly be worse! ![]()
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