The Great Fire laid waste to much of medieval London and prompted a transformation in the layout and appearance of the streets. How did the city recover and was the fire as devastating as history depicts?
By Dr John Schofield
Last updated 2011-02-17
The Great Fire laid waste to much of medieval London and prompted a transformation in the layout and appearance of the streets. How did the city recover and was the fire as devastating as history depicts?
The Great Fire of September 1666 laid waste five sixths of the walled area of the medieval city, from Fleet Street in the west to the Tower of London in the east, and north from the bank of the Thames to the wall at Cripplegate. London Bridge was not affected, as a previous fire of 1633 had cleared an area at its north end which stopped the flames of 1666 spreading. Within the area of the fire no buildings survived intact above ground, though churches of stone, and especially their towers, were only partly destroyed and now stood as gaunt and smoking ruins. In many places the ground was too hot to walk on for several days afterwards.
In many places the ground was too hot to walk on for several days afterwards.
At least 65,000 people had been made homeless by the Fire. At first they camped in the fields outside the walls, but within days had dispersed to surrounding villages or other parts of London. Rents soared in the unburnt area, but somehow accommodation was found for all who needed it. Much merchandise had been destroyed, and there was virtually no fire insurance, so many people were ruined, and some moved away permanently.
Within a few days of the Fire, several proposals with sketch-plans for radical reorganisation of the City's streets were put forward, including one by Christopher Wren, but they had no chance of success, because so many interests were involved and the City wanted to get back on its feet quickly. One of them, by Richard Newcourt, which proposed a rigid grid with churches in squares, was however later adopted for the laying-out of Philadelphia, USA. Then, in October 1666, King Charles and the City appointed Commissioners, including Wren, to regulate the rebuilding. The Commissioners issued proclamations concerning the width of streets and the height, materials and dimensions of secular buildings. And in February 1667 a Fire Court started hearing many competing claims from owners and tenants as the rebuilding began.
...efforts to create a city with fine new public buildings and spaces did not go much further.
Some streets were widened or straightened, bottlenecks eased, and one new street built by carving through private properties: King Street which led from Guildhall to the wharf, (the street's line was much later extended over the river by Southwark Bridge). Markets in the streets were moved into new special market halls. But efforts to create a city with fine new public buildings and spaces did not go much further. There were no new public squares. The four affected gates (Ludgate, Newgate, Moorgate and Temple Bar) were rebuilt in place, even though they were now decorative rather than useful, and all the gates were removed in the 1760s. A New Quay, 40 feet wide and from Blackfriars to the Tower, was intended; but although a space was cleared back from the pre-Fire river wall for this purpose, it became gradually obscured by cranes, sheds and then permanent private warehouses. A separate scheme to make the Fleet into a canal with its own warehouses and vaults got under way but also failed after a few decades.
By the end of 1670 almost 7000 sites had been surveyed and 6000 houses built. By the time of Ogilby and Morgan's map of the City in 1676 all the area of the Fire had been rebuilt with the exception of some of the sites of parish churches. The mapmakers even guessed at the future shape of St Paul's Cathedral, even though only the foundation of the east end had been laid. Surprisingly, considering Wren's habit of keeping the design to himself, they got it roughly right.
By...1676 all the area of the Fire had been rebuilt with the exception of some of the sites of parish churches.
Overall, there were fewer houses (some scholars say a reduction of 20%, others say as much as 39%), partly due to amalgamation of sites and some owners' wish to have larger houses. Four sizes were specified in the rebuilding Act - the largest was a house at the back of a courtyard. These grand residences were now occupied by merchants and aldermen, since the aristocracy had been moving to the West End or Covent Garden before the Great Fire and they now decamped with greater speed. The courtyard houses and the second type, which fronted major streets, were restricted to four storeys in height whereas before the Fire they were sometimes six. Ordinary streets and alleys contained two smaller types, limited to three storeys.
All houses had to be constructed of brick, though some timber was allowed in practice (especially for the cornice at roof-level), and the external walls were to be of differing thickness depending on the type of house. The grander houses sometimes had doorways and windows in stone, but this would have been exceptional. There are a very few survivors today, but an example can be seen in the former Deanery off St Paul's churchyard.
Much has been made of the apparent newness of these houses and the related phenomenon of residential squares. The latter had begun in the 1640s at Covent Garden and Lincoln's Inn Fields, west of the City and outside the area of the Fire, and there were more on the outskirts of the City on both the east and west sides, built in the 1680s. But were the houses, sometimes in rows, really new and thus a modernising phenomenon? Probably not. The four types of house were all from plans which had existed before the Fire. The arrangement of rooms inside them had not changed, neither had their shape except for some regulation of height. They were probably more sanitary and now lasted longer. But in many ways, they were only the medieval or Tudor houses reclothed in brick. Shops were still shops and for several decades after 1666 they were allowed to have projecting signs outside just as they had before the Fire. The great majority of buildings after the Fire had the same functions as before.
The four types of house were all from plans which had existed before the Fire.
As far as the outsides of the houses is concerned, there were also only a few new decorative ideas from France or Holland. The livery companies like the Mercers and Merchant Taylors rebuilt their halls with ornate stone doorways. There would have been far more sash windows now (the origin of the sash window is obscure, but it may have come from Holland about 20 years before the Fire), but still many sideways opening windows or casements. Inside, the panelling and sometimes painted decoration would reflect French taste in the more prestigious houses.
Fifty-one parish churches were rebuilt under the general direction of Christopher Wren (knighted in 1673). Today there are 23 left fairly intact, and ruins or only towers of a further six. Their variety and beauty comes not only from his inventive genius and a close study of classical architecture, but also from an essential pragmatism about the ruins facing him. Often the new church had the same outline as the pre-Fire building, or the tower was retained. Some of the designs may be by Robert Hooke (St Martin Ludgate), but it is clear that Wren only had a general overall control of all these projects.
...archaeological excavation in the City often finds evidence of the Fire and of the rebuilding.
Wren, of course, was principally concerned with St Paul's Cathedral. The first foundations, at the east end, were dug in 1675. The ruins of the west portico of Inigo Jones, in its day a noted piece of architecture, were regretfully removed by Wren in 1688. The choir was finished for a celebratory service in 1697 (Queen Elizabeth came to another to mark its 400th anniversary in 1997); the dome was completed in 1708, and the cathedral declared finished in 1711.
Whether it is around the cathedral, during repairs to a Wren church or on some building sites, archaeological excavation in the City often finds evidence of the Fire and of the rebuilding, especially along the waterfront where the fire rubble was left in the streets and alleys to heighten the ground level against the Thames. This means that not only are some of the pre-Fire buildings saved for excavation, with walls up to five feet high, but the post-Fire improvements can be seen: wider alleys, and more construction in brick. Carved stones from destroyed churches were reused as rubble in foundations and walls, most notably in the crypt of the new St Paul's.
We have perhaps been overimpressed by the Great Fire, and must place it in context - the Fire, destructive though it was, devastated only about one third of the conurbation of London then standing. Within the area of the devastation a new city of brick and occasionally stone arose, but around it a larger area remained timber-framed for generations to come. Inside the City, if we could have walked down a street like Fenchurch Street in 1675, we would have seen an abrupt change from the brick buildings of the new city to the timber and plaster frontages of the pre-Fire city, at the point where the Fire was stopped. This sudden contrast took generations to erase. But it is also true that the Fire created the opportunity to build, in the central area, a city in a new form, which would quickly become the hub of the British Empire in the decades which followed. So the creation of the Empire owes something to the Great Fire of 1666.
Books
London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (Chatto & Windus, 2000)
A City Full of People: Men and Women of London 1650-1750 by P. Earle (London, 1994)
The London Encyclopaedia by Christopher Hibbert & Ben Weinreb (eds)(Macmillan, 1983)
The Diary of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys (edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews, London, 1970-83)
Restoration London by Liza Picard (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)
The Rebuilding of London After the Great Fire by T.F. Reddaway (1940)
The Building of London by John Schofield (1984)
Dr John Schofield has been an archaeologist specialising in towns - especially London - since he joined the Museum of London in 1974. He is currently Curator of Architecture at the Museum and has written much about urban archaeology, London in the medieval and Tudor periods, and the ways in which town centres in Europe and beyond should be preserved.
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