![]() It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into squalid extramural slums such as Shoreditch, Holborn, and Southwark, and had reached far enough to include the independent City of Westminster. London had been a Roman settlement for four centuries and had become progressively more crowded inside its defensive city wall. By "inartificial", Evelyn meant unplanned and makeshift, the result of organic growth and unregulated urban sprawl. John Evelyn, contrasting London to the Baroque magnificence of Paris in 1659, called it a "wooden, northern, and inartificial congestion of Houses". London in the 1660s īy the 1660s, London was by far the largest city in Britain and the third largest in the Western world, estimated at 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants. After the fire, London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan, which still exists today. Various schemes for rebuilding the city were proposed, some of them very radical. Flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. The battle to put out the fire is considered to have been won by two key factors: the strong east wind dropped, and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to create effective firebreaks, halting further spread eastward. Coordinated firefighting efforts were simultaneously getting underway. On Tuesday, the fire spread over nearly the whole City, destroying St Paul's Cathedral and leaping the River Fleet to threaten Charles II's court at Whitehall. The fears of the homeless focused on the French and Dutch, England's enemies in the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War these substantial immigrant groups became victims of street violence. Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. By the time large-scale demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned the bakery fire into a firestorm which defeated such measures. The use of the major firefighting technique of the time, the creation of firebreaks by means of removing structures in the fire's path, was critically delayed due to the indecisiveness of the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth. The fire started in a bakery in Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September, and spread rapidly. The death toll is generally thought to have been relatively small, although some historians have challenged this belief. ![]() The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the wall to the west. ![]() Central London in 1666, with the burnt area shown in pink and outlined in dashes ( Pudding Lane origin marked with a green line) Old St Paul's Cathedral is in the distance, surrounded by the tallest flames. To the left is London Bridge to the right, the Tower of London. The Great Fire of London, depicted by an unknown painter (1675), as it would have appeared from a boat in the vicinity of Tower Wharf on the evening of Tuesday, 4 September 1666. For other notable fires in London, see Early fires of London and Second Great Fire of London. ![]() For other "Great Fires", see List of historic fires. This article is about the 1666 fire of London.
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