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"War's greatest picture"? Inside the night St Paul's Cathedral survived the Blitz
On 29 December 1940, a night of havoc broke bricks and mortar and claimed more than 160 lives. But it also created a moment that was used to bolster British spirit for years to come…
The Blitz had halted briefly over Christmas 1940, but on the evening of Sunday 29 December the Luftwaffe resumed bombing an already hammered London. The whistling sounds of incendiaries were first heard at 6.15pm, and for the next three-and-a-half hours more than 100,000 such bombs fell. The attack was so ferocious that one American reporter telegraphed his office with the words: “The second Great Fire of London has begun.” While most people huddled in shelters or Tube stations, an act that had become all too familiar, firefighters and volunteers tirelessly tackled the 1,500 or so blazes across the city. Dozens of buildings were utterly destroyed – but not one crucial landmark. Why did Churchill want to save St Paul's Cathedral? St Paul’s Cathedral was surrounded by smouldering ruins, while flames licked the edges of the churchyard. But Prime Minister Winston Churchill, recognising its importance to British morale, sent a message saying St Paul’s must be saved at all costs. The cathedral’s volunteer firewatchers, the St Paul’s Watch, spent the evening putting out the fires from the 28 incendiary bombs that rained down on the building, using stirrup pumps, buckets and sand. One crashed through the dome and lodged in the support beams – causing molten lead to drip down – before it finally fell to the stone floor. Yet, incredibly, the cathedral sustained no irreparable damage. By dawn, the fires had been brought under control by the exhausted firefighters, the ‘heroes with grimy faces’. The night had left more than 160 dead and around 500 injured. War's greatest picture? A couple of days later, once the photo had been cleared by the censors, the Daily Mail's front page featured what it dubbed "war's greatest picture". St Paul's was still standing and almost emerging, defiant, from the black smoke. It was taken by Herbert Mason from the roof of the newspaper's office, around half a mile from the cathedral. "The shining cross, dome and towers stood out like a symbol in the inferno," Mason later said. Indeed the photo, known as ‘St Paul’s Survives’, came to represent British resolve – the ultimate icon of ‘Blitz spirit’. This article was first published in BBC History Revealed magazine
Victorian zoos: animal attraction in the 19th century
If the Surrey Zoological Garden was anything to go by, a zoo in the Georgian and Victorian eras was so much more than a place to see animals from around the world. Joanne Cormac reveals how the entertainments put on – which included pyrotechnic re-enactments of the Great Fire of London – reflected Britons’ growing taste for the exotic in the 19th century
One fine day in late spring 1835, veteran aeronaut Charles Green climbed into a hot air balloon from a raft floating on a lake, and soared into the sky. Flight was nothing new for Green – this was his 198th ascent – but today he was joined by an unusual passenger: Jacopo the monkey, a resident of the Surrey Zoological Gardens. As this unlikely duo floated above Walworth, then just south of London, Jacopo, wearing a smart red jacket, descended “with great velocity” in a specially made parachute, to the delight of the watching crowds. Jacopo was physically unharmed, though newspaper reports of the event noted that he “seemed not much to relish the ride”. A label was attached to the poor primate, promising a small fee – and free admission to the gardens – for anyone who found him. Evidently, Jacopo was brought back safely; two years later he returned to the skies, this time with Margaret Graham, the first British woman to make a solo balloon flight. The hot air balloon ride was one of many attractions at Surrey Zoological Gardens, which had opened on 13 August 1831 in the grounds of Walworth Manor House, Kennington. At the time, zoos were rare novelties but, as the public clamour for encounters with exotic animals swelled, they began popping up across Great Britain and Ireland. Read more | Where was England's first zoo? Many of them no longer exist. Surrey Zoo was one of the casualties, yet in its heyday it was an enormous hit with the public. It is the quintessential example of the menagerie-style zoo that struck such a chord with Britons in the 19th century. In its day Surrey’s zoo was the main rival of London Zoo at Regent’s Park. These were, however, very different establishments. Like most early zoos (including those in Dublin, Bristol and Manchester), London’s had lofty ambitions and was aimed at educated society seeking enlightenment. Surrey Zoo, on the other hand, offered exoticism, imperial display and commercial entertainment for its fashionable clientele – all typically Victorian phenomena. A look at its popularity, as well as the activities visitors enjoyed, provides us today with intriguing insights into Victorian ideals and leisure pursuits. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/01/GettyImages-90763997-6837239.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Illustration of a rhinoceros and its calf from a Dutch work on the natural history of Indonesia, published between 1839 and 1844 (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)" title="Illustration of a rhinoceros and its calf from a Dutch work on the natural history of Indonesia, published between 1839 and 1844 (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)" /> Avid collector The driving force behind the Surrey Zoological Gardens was animal dealer Edward Cross. He had bought a small menagerie in 1814, which he exhibited at the Exeter Exchange, a building on the north side of the Strand in central London. His collection, which attracted such famous figures as William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, included lions, tigers, leopards, monkeys, hyenas, an emu, an Andean condor and a male Asiatic elephant named Chunee. The animals were kept in small cages in conditions that were troubling even at the time. Chunee was confined to a small wooden enclosure, and was frequently aggressive. Cross, fearing he might escape, decided to have him put down – a feat that took 152 musket shots to complete. Press reports of the episode created considerable adverse publicity for Cross. By the late 1820s, he was considering the future of the menagerie. Cross wanted to join forces with the new Zoological Society of London (ZSL) that had formed in 1826, establishing London Zoo in 1828. His offer to sell his collection – on the condition that he also be taken on as manager of the zoo – was refused three times. ZSL was keen to move away from the idea of a menagerie as spectacle and entertainment. Instead, they were interested in the nascent science of zoology. True, there were educational aspects to Cross’s menagerie: some of these animals had never been seen before – or only rarely – in England. However, his was primarily a commercial venture; he bought and displayed animals for the entertainment of the public and his own profit. By contrast, London Zoo was an innovator in the scientific study of animal life, taxonomy, conservation and captive animal husbandry. Its habitat designs, including the world’s first aquarium, provided exemplars to other zoos. And its staff members became leading authorities on the animals in their care, spreading their growing knowledge of thousands of species through regular publications. Edward Cross was just not their sort of person. Forced to find an alternative, Cross decided to sell his menagerie to another fledgling society: the Surrey Zoological and Botanical Institution (which he had co-founded in 1831). It accepted the collection, and Cross became superintendent of the new Surrey Zoological Gardens. Read more | A brief history of London tourism since 1800 Establishing a zoo was a risky venture. New exotic animals had to be sourced and transported to Surrey to populate the larger premises, and the arrival of such creatures was big news in the 1830s. London newspapers regularly reported on acquisitions made by the Surrey Zoological Gardens, naming each ship transporting the animals, and its captain. Excited members of the public waited at the dock to catch a glimpse of a tail or a flash of teeth and claws. Sometimes the animals were unloaded at night to evade the crowds. The papers eagerly printed exquisite drawings of the animals, alongside descriptions of their habitats in exotic locales – and daring stories of their violent capture. Sadly, many animals did not survive the journey to Britain; others died soon after the ship docked. A couple of weeks after the zoo opened, papers reported that a rhinoceros had died during the crossing from the Cape Colony (now part of South Africa). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/01/AKG4894759-859538c.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Edward Cross’s menagerie at the Exeter Exchange, c1820. Animals here, such as lions, elephants and monkeys, were confined to small cages and kept in poor conditions (Photo by Heritage-Images / Oxford Science Archive / akg-images)" title="Edward Cross’s menagerie at the Exeter Exchange, c1820. Animals here, such as lions, elephants and monkeys, were confined to small cages and kept in poor conditions (Photo by Heritage-Images / Oxford Science Archive / akg-images)" /> A pack of hounds In the 19th century, the British empire encompassed colonies in Africa, India, the Americas and Australia, providing rich pickings for British collectors and zoologists. Cross was one of those tapping into the empire’s networks of trade and exploitation to source new animals. Soon after the loss of that unfortunate African rhinoceros, the zoo successfully sourced an Asian rhino from Calcutta (now Kolkata), reportedly owned previously by one of the “Rajahs” of India who had traded it for a “full pack of English hounds”. Wealthy collectors returning from their travels would sometimes donate animals to the zoo. In 1832, former naval officer and colonist Captain William Langdon returned from Australia and the Falkland Islands with kangaroos, possums and geese, which he presented to the zoo. Sometimes the animals’ keepers travelled with them. The zoo proudly advertised its “Giraffes attended by Nubian keepers”, who themselves became part of the exotic displays. Read more | Life with the lions: the Tower of London menagerie Even when animals arrived safely, further challenges often arose. Many died simply because the keepers were not knowledgeable enough to care for them. Others escaped. A black swan was reported missing in September 1833, when a “handsome” finder’s fee was offered. There were also human fatalities. In August 1833, one of Cross’s employees, George Chard, was gored to death by a wildebeest he’d whipped in an effort to force it to perform for spectators. Such was the enthusiasm for exotic creatures in the Regency era that some animals became celebrities. One of the oldest inmates at the zoo – one that had been among Cross’s original collection at the Exeter Exchange – was a mandrill named Happy Jerry. He had been brought to England on a slave ship captured off the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1815, reports claimed. He had, according to those same reports, been taught to sit in a chair, smoke and drink liquor, and was fed from Cross’s table “as a parlour guest”. Jerry became so famous that George IV invited him to dine at Windsor Castle, where the king was said to have been delighted by watching the mandrill eat specially prepared venison. Read more | The surprising history of Victorian dog shows On its opening, the Surrey Zoological and Botanical Institution emphasised its contribution to the new science of zoology. By the 1840s, though, the animals began to be overshadowed by other attractions – firework displays, historical tableaux comprising 20-metre-high painted sets and trapeze acts. In June 1844, the zoo advertised a “Terrific Representation of the Great Fire of London in 1666” as viewed from the Thames. It would include “new and extraordinary effects” and would be the “crowning triumph of the pyrotechnic art”. During an “Eruption of Vesuvius” in June 1846, crowds gasped as smoke and red and green flames issued from the “volcano”. Rumbling noises built up to a huge explosion after which lava gushed “in an overwhelming torrent” over models of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Of course, such tumult would surely have had a traumatising effect on the nervous animals. National and imperial values underpinned many of the tableaux. In the summer of 1847, visitors enjoyed a recreation of the siege of Gibraltar, advertised as featuring “the blowing up of the battering ships!” and a demonstration of “the invincible prowess of British Arms!” Other displays celebrated the vast reach of the empire – one example being a recreation of the “Temples of Elora from Hindoo Mythology”, at a time when Britain was increasing its control of India. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/01/GettyImages-464782739-f814ad7.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A representation of the eruption of Vesuvius at the Surrey Zoological Gardens (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="A representation of the eruption of Vesuvius at the Surrey Zoological Gardens (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> Adding some music Music was increasingly introduced to indulge the Victorian taste for variety entertainments. During the late 1830s and early 1840s, the zoo hosted concerts by a Russian horn band, a quadrille band and a concertina soloist. In 1844, it invested in a house act: Mr Godfrey and his wind band. Alongside the regular polkas, quadrilles, national songs and waltzes that were so popular with audiences, in August 1844 Godfrey conducted a full performance of Beethoven’s Sixth (Pastoral) Symphony, arranged for wind instruments. Seeing the huge popularity of Godfrey’s concerts, the zoo’s directors invested yet more heavily in musical entertainment. In 1845, they hired charismatic French conductor Louis Jullien, a celebrity skilled in self-promotion. He encouraged fantastical stories circulating in the press claiming that he had moved to London to escape Parisian creditors, having been injured in a duel, reported dead and forced to hide in a farmhouse. Jullien was handsome, it was said, sporting a shock of curly hair and a neat moustache, and was always fashionably dressed, wearing white gloves. In June 1845, he gave his first “Concert Monstre” at the zoo, conducting an orchestra of 300 musicians on a huge covered platform to an audience of 12,000 people. Jullien continued Godfrey’s model of promenade concerts but on a larger scale, recruiting musicians from all over Europe. He was a real showman, adding extra effects including fireworks and dioramas, weaving the music directly into a story. During the “storm” section of the Pastoral he rattled a box of dried peas to evoke the sound of falling hailstones, and added “Military Effects” to his performance of Beethoven’s Battle Symphony. He himself was theatrical and energetic; indeed, he was often accused of “over-conducting” – visibly acting out the music. Surrey Zoological Gardens was now far more than a place to admire or learn about exotic animals. Its various performances, sights and experiences constantly evolved to appeal to the fashionable public’s desire for novelty. Jullien’s arrival coincided with the peak of the zoo’s popularity, but it began to struggle in the 1850s. Stiff competition had emerged from other zoos and pleasure gardens, and from the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace, with its wide variety of exhibits including music and exotica. The gardens became run down and no longer as fashionable as they had seemed in their 1840s heyday. Finally, in 1855, the animals were auctioned off, and Surrey Music Hall was built on the site (though that was itself destroyed by fire only a few years later, in 1861). The gardens closed the following year and in 1877 were sold for housing development. Today, a small part of what was Surrey Zoological Gardens – now named Pasley Park – is open to visitors. An information board and two ostrich sculptures are the only reminders of the exotic animals, the monster concerts and the magnificent firework displays that drew such crowds in the 1840s. The simian aeronaut Jacopo is long forgotten. Joanne Cormac is a research fellow at the University of Nottingham This article was first published in the January 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine Explore more learning from our course on Victorian Britain HistoryExtra Academy video lecture with Ruth Goodman | Victorian leisure Week two quiz: leisure in Victorian Britain Cricket, cocaine and cocoa houses: pastimes in Victorian Britain Victorian zoos: animal attraction in the 19th century The surprising history of Victorian dog shows Frozen Charlotte dolls: the Victorian Barbie Discover the whole course here
Why are British monarchs traditionally crowned in Westminster Abbey?
There is no way to tell the story of the English monarchy without Westminster Abbey, the site of royal coronations, weddings, funerals and burials for the last 1,000 years. Professor David Carpenter answers the key questions about the abbey’s long history
What is Westminster Abbey, and how old is it? A marvel of gothic architecture, it stands on one side of Parliament Square in London, adjoining Big Ben, Victoria Tower and the Houses of Parliament. It is the place of coronations (including that of Charles III) and has many famous (and infamous) people buried and commemorated within it, including monarchs, prime ministers, scientists and poets. Legend has it that it was founded in the reign of an Anglo-Saxon king called Saberht in the early seventh century, after a miraculous appearance by Saint Peter. There’s some reason to think that the site of the abbey was originally an island in the Thames, the island of Thorney, so we have to think of the river as much wider than it was before it was embanked. On the podcast | David Carpenter answers listener questions on the history of Westminster Abbey Until the reformation, the abbey was the home of a community of Benedictine monks ruled by an abbot. Since then, although keeping the name 'abbey', it has been an Anglican church governed by a dean and small group of clergymen called 'canons'. They form the dean and chapter. The abbey is a 'royal peculiar' meaning it is subject only to the monarch. The bishop of London has no jurisdiction over it. When was the Westminster Abbey that we see today constructed? There was an abbey at Westminster in the late-Anglo Saxon period, but the real start came with Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042-66), who had a palace essentially on the site of the Houses of Parliament and completely rebuilt the church. The Confessor also richly endowed the abbey. Read more | Edward the Confessor: England’s holy hardman The building of today, however, comes not from the 11th century, but mostly from the 13th during the reign of Henry III (r1216-72). He built all the church we have today save for the nave, Henry VII's chapel and the western towers. That said, the foundations of Edward the Confessor’s abbey and cloisters have been uncovered in excavations, as well as the remains of an even older door. His building was completed a week before his death on 5 January 1066, and since he died in Westminster he was buried on the site. There’s an extraordinarily vivid depiction of his body being borne to his tomb on the Bayeux Tapestry, as well as a depiction of the new church itself. Why is it called Westminster? Was there an Eastminster? The reason for that is to contrast the abbey with the great minster of St Paul’s, which is, if you like, Eastminster. While that name was never used to refer to St Paul’s Cathedral, the name Westminster caught on and came to describe the whole area, including the royal palace. Why did Henry III rebuild Westminster Abbey? In 1161, Edward the Confessor had been canonised and two years later his body was translated to a shrine in the abbey, but if the monks and abbots who had campaigned for his veneration hoped this would boost the image of Westminster they were initially mistaken. There is little evidence of an increase in visits by pilgrims or donations. Kings of England didn’t seem to be hugely interested, and the same was true of Henry III in the early stages of his life. But when we come to the 1230s, everything changed and Henry adopted Edward the Confessor as his patron saint. He had gone through a difficult time politically: his ministers had let him down, plunged him into a civil war, and he had even been threatened with deposition. On the podcast | Henry III: inside the mind of a medieval king At this point, 1233-35, monks of Westminster came to Henry and convinced him to place his faith in a saint that would bring him success in this life and safe passage to the next. Henry came to believe it profoundly. His decision seemed to be immediately rewarded: a monk travelled to Provence and returned with Eleanor to be Henry’s much-desired wife. To secure the Confessor's ongoing support, however, it was vital for Henry to prove his continuing devotion, and this is where the abbey comes in. Henry thought there could be no more convincing proof than pulling down the Confessor's church and building a magnificent new one in its place, while at the same time translating the Confessor's body to a dazzling new shrine. That’s what Henry did, so the great heart of the abbey we see today was built between 1245 and 1269 at the king’s expense – or, in a way, at his subjects’ expenses because he used the revenues of the kingdom. He spent probably about two years’ annual revenue, which could have built three, four or even five of the great castles Edward I built in Wales. Watch now | David Carpenter on history of Westminster Abbey Who designed Henry III’s abbey and do we know anything about who built it? Although quite probably English in origin, the abbey's master mason was called Henry of Rheims, and the design certainly owed much to Rheims cathedral and other great French churches. It was thus French style flying buttresses that enabled the abbey to achieve its great internal height. It is 104 feet from the floor to the top of the vault, some 20 or so feet higher than England's great churches. Henry's subjects would have thought the abbey stunningly new. A French architect might have been more critical because – high as the Abbey was – the great French churches reached much higher. Probably the constricted site at Westminster prevented foundations for any greater height, but Henry would have had an answer to the critique. For if not as high, his abbey, he would have said, was far more magnificent than the French churches: magnificent in its use of Purbeck marble, its highly decorated vault, and in the diaper (little carved roses) covering much of what would otherwise have been bare surfaces. In this decorative splendour, the abbey was far more an English style church than a French. Read more | A brief history of Westminster Abbey The abbey's basic design came from Henry of Rheims, but he worked closely with King Henry, who urged on the work (ensuring wages were paid so as to prevent strikes) and was constantly thinking of how to make the abbey yet more sumptuous. Of course, the two Henrys were not alone. Accounts from the 1250s show between 400 and 500 people working on the abbey every day, including stone cutters, stone layers, polishers (of the Purbeck marble), glaziers, painters, plumbers, carpenters and labourers. The daily wage of a labourer, at one and a half pennies, was about enough to buy his daily food and drink. A skilled craftsman might receive four times as much. Henry spent tens of thousands of pounds on the construction, yet it was not fully completed by the time of his death in 1272. It would not be until the 14th century that work on the rest of the nave began. One of the great tributes was that the new nave imitated the design of Henry’s abbey, which was unusual. Normally speaking, a nave in the 14th century would have been built with 14th-century architecture, like seen at Canterbury and Winchester, but at Westminster it was deliberately not brought up to date. When and why was Westminster Abbey chosen as the place of coronations? The tradition goes back to 1066, following Edward the Confessor’s death and the Norman Conquest. The crowning of William the Conqueror on Christmas Day launched a still-unbroken line of kings and queens of England staging their coronation at Westminster Abbey. How many coronations have taken place at Westminster Abbey? In 2023, Charles III will be the 40th monarch to be crown at Westminster Abbey. The only exceptions were the two monarchs who were never crowned, Edward V (one of the Princes in the Tower) and Edward VIII. Read more | Coronations: a historical A-Z of the royal ceremony in Britain The importance of the tradition is well demonstrated by Henry III. When he came to the throne in 1216 in the middle of a civil war, his enemies were in control of Westminster so he could not be crowned there. He was actually crowned at Gloucester, but that was thought somehow wrong; there was a second coronation in 1220 at Westminster Abbey. The design of Henry's abbey was itself very much influenced by its being the coronation church. From Rheims came not merely the flying buttresses but also the forms of the windows (two lancets surmounted by a rose) and the rounded east end. Why? It was not just that the master mason had come from Rheims. Read more | 10 reasons why Henry III may have been a great king It was also that Rheims was the French coronation church and hence the design seemed right for its English counterpart. But the needs of the coronation also caused Henry to go beyond the Rheims design both in the great length of the transepts and in the building (hugely costly) of a gallery at triforium level. Both were there to allow crowds of people to attend the coronation as well as other principal services. Meanwhile, as the art historian Claudia Bolgia has argued, the famous Cosmati pavement, installed in 1268 from materials brought from Italy, resembled the pavement of Old St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, where emperors were anointed. Henry was offering the abbey, and the Confessor, to his people, and he knew this would be a church for the great services of the kingdom. As well as coronations, what other ceremonies are held at Westminster Abbey? Westminster Abbey is a thriving Anglican church, and so services are held there on a daily basis. Various royal ceremonies have been, and continue to be, held there, from jubilee celebrations (starting with Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee in 1887) to the Maundy Thursday service in which the monarch distributes alms, in the form of ‘Maundy money’. The abbey has hosted royal weddings throughout its history, although the majority have been in the 20th century. The most recent was the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011. Royal funerals too are a feature, as recently as 2022 with the funeral service of Elizabeth II. Read more | The 8 most famous royal weddings in British history But while the abbey has thus always been a royal church, it has also very much been a church for the people. The coronation service itself is a pact between the monarch and his people – hence the need for the space for the people to attend. At the start, the archbishop of Canterbury asks those present whether they will accept the new monarch as their ruler. And after, with 'loud and repeated shouts' they have said 'yes', the monarch takes an oath to rule his people with justice and mercy. The theme for the 900th anniversary celebrations in 1966 of Edward the Confessor's abbey was 'One People'. How many kings and queens are buried at Westminster Abbey? A total of 30 kings and queens are buried at the abbey, the last being George II in 1760, while a vast number of notable figures – such as statesmen, scientists, artists and, of course, those interred in Poets’ Corner – have been interred, or at least their ashes, and memorialised there. How has the Westminster Abbey changed since Henry III? The main external change was the addition of two great white towers at the west end, which are in a sense the abbey’s most iconic visual representation. They were built in the 1720s-30s. The famous Henry VII Chapel replaced the former Lady Chapel in the early 16th century, but the building is being changed to this day. One of the most important things that’s happened in recent years has been the opening up of the triforium galleries, where the abbey’s museum is now, as that gives the public a wonderful view. Read more | How did Henry VII spend his money? How was Westminster Abbey affected by the Dissolution of the Monasteries? Although Westminster Abbey was dissolved and its relics and treasures removed, the building itself escaped unscathed. While the shrine of Edward the Confessor was dismantled, his bones were hidden away and the shrine base restored under the brief return to Catholicism under Mary I in the 1550s, which allowed it to survive in its current form. On the podcast | Dr Hugh Willmott responds to listener questions on Henry VIII’s suppression of the monasteries Greater damage has been done by the addition of the tombs in the abbey, since they destroyed large parts of the wall arcade. The exterior is also much different to what would have existed in Henry III’s day, with the sculptures having been lost or refaced due to the ravages of time and decay. It was untouched by the great fire of London in 1666, but during the Blitz in the Second World War, a bomb struck the lantern tower over the central crossing (where the coronation takes place). The whole ceiling collapsed and fell to the ground, but fortunately burnt out there without doing further damage, so the Abbey escaped the recent fate of Notre-Dame in Paris. How is the upkeep of Westminster Abbey funded? English churches, abbeys and cathedrals are owned by the Church of England, which receives no subsidy from the state in maintaining them. This is in contrast to France, where religious buildings are owned by the state. In England, they have to get money, so there is a necessary emphasis on payment to go in and look around. Nearly all preserve a place for private prayer and you don’t have to pay to go to services. The question is: do you want to pay more taxes so the state will own the churches and cathedrals, and then perhaps you can go in for free, or do you want to pay less taxes and the church has to charge for going in? Professor David Carpenter was speaking with David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast, discussing the long history of Westminster Abbey as part of our Everything You Wanted To Know series. Hear more from this conversation in the full audio episode, or watch the whole video interview.
Alternate history: what if the Great Fire of London never happened?
For a little under five days, London was ablaze in one of the city's worst-ever disasters. What was the impact of the Great Fire? Dr Clare Jackson talks to Nige Tassell about how it changed the English capital and why its legacy as a ‘plague killer’ should be extinguished
When fire shot through the City of London over the course of three days in early September 1666, razing everything in its path, the future of England’s capital – its very existence – was in jeopardy. Although the estimated death toll remained remarkably low for a fire that wreaked such destruction, the City itself looked much different when the final smouldering was extinguished. More than 13,000 houses had been destroyed, along with nearly 90 churches. Some significant buildings were lost to the flames, including the original St Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Exchange, as well as the city gates at Aldersgate, Ludgate and Newgate. The subsequent history of England would have taken a different complexion had its entire capital been lost. As it was, the flames were largely limited to the City of London. A few historians have even suggested that, in some regards, the Great Fire of London turned out to be a force for good. The principal tenet of this line of thinking revolves around the Great Plague. The belief is that, when fire broke out, the epidemic – which had ripped so easily through the cheek-by-jowl living quarters of the City the previous year – would have found it much harder be transmitted; in short, that the fire killed off the epidemic, certainly in London. Did you know? Thomas Farriner’s bakehouse (where the Great Fire of London began) was not located on Pudding Lane, as traditionally believed. Hearth tax records show it was actually sited on Fish Yard, a small enclave off Pudding Lane. Read more | Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of living in Restoration London Dr Clare Jackson – senior tutor at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and author of the award-winning Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588–1688 (Allen Lane, 2021) – dismisses this theory. “This is a myth. The Great Fire had not spread to areas that had experienced particularly high levels of plague infection, such as Southwark, Clerkenwell and Whitechapel.” That is, the flames failed to reach certain districts, so couldn’t have had an impact on plague numbers. Plus, the timeline of the epidemic doesn’t neatly tally with the timeline of the Great Fire, as Dr Jackson explains: “Plague mortality had already started to decline from late 1665, while people also continued to die from plague after the Fire. Popular associations between the Great Plague of 1665 and the Fire of 1666 arise only from their close chronological proximity.” On the podcast | Rebecca Rideal responds to listener questions about the devastating blaze that swept through the capital in 1666 Understandably, the Great Fire caused mass migration from the City of London to surrounding areas. But this alone didn’t reshape the city, especially as much of this migration was only short term as the homeless sought temporary shelter in the open land beyond the city limits, particularly to the north. By then, London was already swiftly expanding and swelling. “Before the Fire, there had already been significant expansion westwards, with local populations moving beyond the City’s walls to escape overcrowding. Newly fashionable areas such as St James, Covent Garden and Westminster were attracting the gentry and upwardly mobile migrants, while poorer families were tending to move eastwards.” A speedy recovery Rather than licking its wounds, the City of London swiftly set about rebuilding itself. The economy obviously took an immediate knock, but it wasn’t as catastrophic a hit as might have been expected. “While there was inevitable short-term disruption to trade,” explains Dr Jackson, “the speed with which the authorities embarked on rapid rebuilding and recovery was remarkable. Two sets of plans for the City’s rebuilding had already been submitted to the government of Charles II by 13 September 1666, only a week after the Fire ended. By 1670, around 6,000 houses had been rebuilt.” One legacy of the Great Fire was the use of less flammable materials in building; the Rebuilding Act of 1667 specified that “all the outsides of all buildings in and about the said City be henceforth made of brick or stone”. However, as Dr Jackson clarifies, the events of 1666 can’t take complete credit, pointing out that, during the early 1600s, James VI and I had made similar restrictions on the use of materials in construction in London, “both to reduce fire risk and to reserve timber for England’s Navy ships. Such orders had, however, often been disregarded, but the Fire of 1666 provided an opportunity for widespread enforcement, as City authorities were given the right to demolish illegally built houses.” In context: the Great Fire of London From Sunday 2 to Wednesday 5 September 1666, the City of London was overwhelmed by the largest, fastest-moving fire it had ever experienced, one that razed most of the buildings within its walls to the ground. Having broken out in a bakery just after 12am, the fire spread swiftly through the night. There was a chance to contain its reach early on by demolishing buildings ahead of its path to create firebreaks, but the Lord Mayor dallied over authorising such measures and the fire took serious hold. Fanned by easterly winds, it roared largely unchallenged across the entire City. The flames only dissipated when the wind dropped nearly 72 hours after its outbreak. It was “the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw,” recorded the famed diarist Samuel Pepys. One of the grandest rebuilds was, of course, the magnificent Sir Christopher Wren-designed St Paul’s Cathedral, which still dominates the London skyline as viewed looking northwards from the South Bank of the Thames. That’s an undisputed visual reminder of the Fire. One last potential legacy of 1666 concerns how prepared London was for subsequent outbreaks of fires. Within a few years, the large-scale adoption of fire insurance became standard practice, but the idea that a new emergency service was immediately created is again debunked by Dr Jackson. “There were a few new fire pumps, but the first city-wide fire service was not created until January 1833.” Perhaps it should have come into force earlier. In 1676, 600 houses in Southwark were lost to a blaze, and a further 1,000 in Wapping six years after that. In conclusion, although it accelerated certain developments that were already afoot, had the Great Fire not happened, the course of English history wouldn’t have been terribly affected. However, if the wind hadn’t dropped three days into the fire and the flames had continued to consume all before them, the events of September 1666 could have left the country without a capital city. More from our alternate history series What if... Britain and France went to war in 1898? What if... Queen Victoria had been assassinated? What if... the Ottomans had won at Lepanto? What if... George III hadn't 'lost' the colonies What if... the Spanish Armada had succeeded? What if... the gunpowder plot had succeeded? What if... Alexander the Great had lived longer? Clare Jackson is senior tutor of Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge. She has presented the BBC2 series The Stuarts and its sequel, The Stuarts in Exile, and is author of Devil-Land: England under Siege 1588-1688 (Allen Lane, 2021) This article was first published in the October 2022 edition of BBC History Revealed
Your guide to the Great Fire of London, plus 10 surprising facts
One of the most famous disasters in London's history, the Great Fire of London in 1666 devastated the heart of England's capital, destroying more than 13,000 houses and badly damaging landmarks including St Paul's Cathedral and the Royal Exchange. But how much do you really know about the blaze? We bring you the facts...
Why did the Great Fire of London start? Who was to blame? And how many died? Discover the story of the 1666 blaze that destroyed the City of London – from diarist Samuel Pepys's first-hand accounts, to the aftermath of the devastating fire... When was the Great Fire of London? How did the Great Fire of London start? The Great Fire of London: eye-witness accounts What did people do when the fire broke out? The aftermath of the Great Fire of London How many people died in the Great Fire of London? How was London rebuilt after the Great Fire of London? 10 lesser-known facts about the Great Fire of London Great Fire of London: through the eyes of Samuel Pepys The Great Fire of London: key facts When was the Great Fire of London? 2 September 1666 to 5 September 1666 How much damage did it cause? It is thought that the Great Fire of London destroyed up to four-fifths of the City of London, including most of the civic buildings, old St Paul’s Cathedral, 87 churches, and around 13,000 houses How many people died in the Great Fire of London? "Though we do not know exactly how many people died as a result of the Great Fire of London, it was almost certainly more than commonly accepted figures," says historian Rebecca Rideal When was the Great Fire of London? The Great Fire of London began on Sunday 2 September 1666. The famous diarist Samuel Pepys – from whom we know a great deal about the event – was enjoying a good night’s rest at the time; the previous day he’d been to the theatre, avoided someone he didn’t like and repaired to Islington. He ate, drank and became “mighty merry”, before singing all the way home, writing some letters and falling into bed. Hardly surprising, then, that when his maid called him at three o’clock in the morning to look at a fire across town, he decided it was far enough away not to worry about and went straight back to sleep. Pepys wasn’t the only one. The Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, took one look at the blaze, declared “a woman might piss it out,” and dived back under the covers. In the days that followed, his weak leadership added fuel to a fire that became one of the greatest catastrophes the city has seen. A spark from a baker’s oven grew into an all-consuming monster that lasted four days. The immediate aftermath was homelessness and ruin for thousands, but the effects can still be seen today. How did the Great Fire of London start? The Great Fire began when someone in Thomas Farynor’s Pudding Lane bakery failed to securely damp down the oven before going to bed. By Monday evening, 300 houses had burned – the final toll would top 13,000. Divine retribution? Mystics, fortune tellers and especially Puritans had predicted doom for the city’s modern, sinful ways even before the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. London, led by the decadent Charles II, enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and was, according to the deeply religious, ripe for a tumble. It was, they claimed, already happening. The Great Plague had taken 100,000 lives the previous year and invasion by the Dutch seemed to be only a matter of time. The ‘666’ number had not gone unnoticed either. In 1597, an anonymous pamphlet, Babylon is Fallen, had suggested 1666 would be the Year of the Beast, perhaps even the time of Christ’s second coming. Oddly, afterwards, it was commemorated by poet John Dryden as an annus mirabilis (‘year of wonders’). Restoration London was frivolous and worldly, bustling and cosmopolitan. On narrow, dirty and dark streets, rickety houses were built from wood and thatch. Their protruding upper storeys, ‘jetties’, almost met at the top. Filth rained onto unwary pedestrians from upstairs windows. Inside, people lit their houses with candles and cooked with open fires. There was hay in the stables, pitch on the roofs, tar in the shipyards and even gunpowder in many homes, as Cromwell’s soldiers retained their muskets from the civil wars. Given the city’s flammability, doom-mongers’ predictions of an apocalyptic inferno could hardly be deemed radical. The Great Fire of London: eye-witness accounts We have several eye-witness accounts of the fire. The most famous is that of Pepys, whose access to famous figures such as the King, the Duke of York and the Lord Mayor make his version pivotal. Pepys’s friend John Evelyn, another diarist, lived in Deptford but came to town to see the kerfuffle. Letters and memoirs from ordinary people provide glimpses of what went on below the surface. Sir Edward Harley’s account mentions Farynor’s bakery maid, who, he says, was too scared to climb onto the roof next door with the rest of the household and became the fire’s first victim. Unless in the fire’s immediate path, people didn’t panic – at first. Strong winds from the east, however, fanned the flames, and disagreement and indecision allowed things to get out of hand. Postmaster James Hickes was forced to flee from the post office, but not before taking as many letters as he could carry. With no reliable information, rumour and hearsay took over. 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the history of London Firefighting was the job of the Watch, ‘bell-men’ who patrolled the streets at night. Every church stored basic equipment – fire hooks (long poles to demolish precarious buildings), ladders, leather buckets, axes and ‘squirts’ (the 17th-century Super Soaker). The few ‘fire engines’ were clumsy and the river had no quays, so firefighters had to trundle them to the water as best they could. Several toppled into the Thames. The Museum of London holds an incomplete fire engine from around 1678. As part of their ‘Fire! Fire!’ project, they commissioned Croford Coachbuilders to rebuild the missing parts. “It wasn’t until we put it together again that we could see how it would work,” explains Meriel Jeater, curator of the Museum of London’s ‘Fire! Fire!’ exhibition. “Now the wheels are back on we’ve realised it’s really difficult to turn corners.” The default fire-fighting technique was demolition, but faced with that prospect, the Lord Mayor demurred. He may have feared being personally held to account for the damage, but, whatever his reasons, Bloodworth became a hate figure. Pepys described him as “a silly man”. In one of Pepys’s proudest moments, he was called to court to describe the fire to the Kingand the Duke of York. He advised a troubled Charles that buildings must be pulled down. “The King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him, and command him to spare no houses, but to pull down before the fire every way. The Duke of York bid me tell him that if he would have any more soldiers he shall.” Pepys made his way back, noting “every creature coming away loaden with goods to save, and here and there sicke people carried away in beds”. When he found Bloodworth, the mayor was “like a man spent, with a handkercher about his neck. To the King’s message he cried, like a fainting woman, ‘Lord! What can I do? I am spent: people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.’” Bloodworth refused the Duke of York’s soldiers and disappeared to “refresh himself, having been up all night”. Disgusted, Pepys reflected he appeared to be “a very weak man”. People moved valuables to nearby ‘safety’, then again, and again as the flames licked closer. “I did remove my money and iron chests into my cellar, as thinking that the safest place,” recounts Pepys. “And got my bags of gold into my office, ready to carry away, and my chief papers of accounts.” It wasn’t long before he would bury his wine and parmesan cheese, for safekeeping. The diarist was helped by the wife of a colleague, Sir William Batten, when, at 4am on Monday 3 September, she sent a cart to carry his things to the safety of a house in Bethnal Green. Pepys didn’t like the Battens – and is regularly rude about them in his diary – but for once he was grateful. Most Londoners weren’t so lucky. What did people do when the fire broke out? London streamed with people trying to get out, gridlocked by narrow streets and bottlenecked by the eight gates in the old Roman wall. The river jammed with boats. “Here we saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges & boates laden with what some had time & courage to save, as on the other, the Carts &c. carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, & Tents erecting to shelter both people & what goods they could get away,” writes John Evelyn who, on hearing the news, couldn’t resist taking his wife and son to Southwark to watch the carnage from the South Bank. Pepys noted that one-in-three boats boasted a pair of virginals (a keyboard instrument) and most of the saved goods were, unsurprisingly, luxuries. One witness, Robert Flatman, writing to his lawyer brother, tells him his chambers are down – but his books are safe. The Museum of London holds a half-finished embroidery and set of bed-hangings said to have been saved from the flames. Most burned. Excavations have fetched up crusty, rusted lumps which, under X-ray, reveal themselves as a padlock and several keys, fused together in London’s furnace. A large iron lump turned out to be a heavy-duty waffle iron, just like ones used today. Archaeologists found, in a building two doors from Farynor’s bakery, melted hooks and eyes, as we might use on clothes, along with heat-twisted window glass and partly-melted ceramic floor tiles. “We understand it must have been at least 1,200 degrees to do that,” says Jeater. However chaotic the flow out of town, it was almost as busy going towards the blaze. With carts and boats suddenly at a premium, it didn’t take long for country folk to realise they could charge extortionate rates to desperate refugees. The fire brought out the worst in some. Fourteen-year-old schoolboy William Taswell, who roamed the ruins, describes his father being robbed by people pretending to help, and mobs attacking foreigners, who were increasingly blamed for the disaster. But while the Lord Mayor dragged his heels, first-hand reports describe King Charles up to his ankles in water helping to fight the flames. Londoners were impressed at the king’s “labouring in person” and if, to modern ears, his later declaration that no one had lost more than himself doesn’t sound too diplomatic, they knew what he meant. Pepys, who had initially taken a boat to watch the fire – before “fire drops” raining from the sky made it too dangerous – had his family’s safety in mind. When his wife Elizabeth woke him at 2am with the flames at the bottom of their lane, it was time to get out. “Lord what sad sight it was by moone-light to see, the whole City almost on fire that you might see it plain at Woolwich,” he wrote, having taken a boat to the nearby port. His family safe, Pepys dashed back expecting to find his home consumed, but it wasn’t. The wind had changed, causing the flames to switch course. Pepys climbed the church tower (brave, given its clock had burned) “and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw; everywhere great fires, oylecellars and brimstone and other things burning”. He picked his way through the streets, his “feet ready to burn, walking through the towne among the hot coles”, and picking up a piece of glass as a souvenir “melted and buckled with the heat of the fire like parchment”. He watched “a poor cat taken out of a hole in the chimney, joyning to the wall of the Exchange; with, the hair all burned off the body, and yet alive”. It wasn’t the only time he noted the animals: “The poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till they were some of them burned their wings, and fell down.” Then at Moorfields he witnessed human suffering. Refugees, who had lost everything overnight, camped in the open air. He described the “wretches”, remarking how prices had taken a sharp hike during the fire: “twopence for a plain pennyloaf”. A city in ruin: the aftermath of the Great Fire of London Probably due to the demolition-policy, the fire stopped at Pye (Pie) Corner on the west of the city, on 5 September, but London was decimated. St Paul’s Cathedral lay in ruins, joined by scores of churches, thousands of homes and the city’s only bridge, itself once covered in shops and dwellings. People wandered, dazed, through the rubble, looking for their old homes and haunts. Evelyn moved “with extraordinary difficulty, clambring over mountaines of yet smoking rubbish, & frequently mistaking where I was, the ground under my feete so hott, as made me not onely Sweate, but even burnt the soles of my shoes”. How many people died in the Great Fire of London? After the fire, the Parish Clerks’ bills of mortality, listing causes of death, were collated, with just six deaths appearing to have been fire-related. “It’s a mystery as to why more deaths aren’t recorded,” says Jeater. “There must have been more.” The true figure of deaths during the Great Fire of London may never be known. The small number of deaths, however, meant mass misery. Gigantic encampments of around 100,000 homeless people appeared outside the city walls. “The fields are the only receptacle which they can find for themselves and their goods,” writes witness Thomas Vincent, “most of the late inhabitants of London lie all night in the open air, with no other canopy over them but that of the heavens.” As for Evelyn, he went north to Islington and Highgate, where “two hundred thousand people of all ranks & degrees, dispersed & laying along by their heapes of what they could save from the Incendium, deploring their losse, & though ready to perish for hunger & destitution, yet not asking one penny for reliefe”. Relief, asked for or not, was on its way, by order of the King. On 10 October, people across the country went to church, fasted for the day and donated money to destitute Londoners. The new lord mayor, Sir William Bolton, for whom everyone had high hopes after Bloodworth, was in charge of administrating the £12,000 raised. It all ended in scandal, however, when he couldn’t account for £1,800 and had to resign. Pepys, no fan of his predecessor, called Bolton’s actions “the greatest piece of roguery that they say was ever found in a Lord Mayor”. London was never be the same again. “I could not sleep till almost two in the morning through thoughts of fire,” Pepys wrote months later, in February 1667. Rebuilding, with fire-resistant bricks and mortar, had begun, but the mental scars would be harder to erase. Paying the price: fire judges Nobody agreed about who should pay for rebuilding after the Great Fire of London. Many landlords required tenants to continue paying for homes that didn’t exist anymore – some even claimed tenants should rebuild their homes at their own expense. The Fire of London Disputes Act declared: “Every one concerned should beare a proportionable share of the losse according to their severall Interests,” but admitted that “wherein in respect of the multitude of cases varying in their circumstances, noe certaine generall rule can be prescribed.” To oversee disputes at the Fire Court, 22 men were recruited as firen judges. Speed was imperative, so they usually pronounced judgement within a day of hearing cases. They gave up their time free of charge and heard hundreds of cases. Between 1671-74, portraits of each judge were painted as a thank you. How was London rebuilt after the Great Fire of London? The ground may have been too hot to walk on, but that didn’t stop plans for rebuilding. First off the mark was Christopher Wren (not yet a ‘sir’) on 11 September, with a handsome peacock-tail grid of boulevards radiating from a central monument. He was followed by John Evelyn with a similar structure, containing an elegant kite-design at its centre. There were more radical suggestions, such as the severe, box-like grid of identical squares by Richard Newcourt, or retired army officer Valentine Knight’s terrifying ladderfest of tiny streets. From magnificent ruins to imposing forts: 10 must-visit British castles The plans received varying levels of excitement by Charles II, but none found favour with Londoners. No landowner was prepared to see his few square feet consumed into a giant communal grid. So the medieval criss-cross of alleyways and courtyards was rebuilt, albeit with wider streets and one new road. Strict building regulations dictated construction. Sensible, straight-sided houses were to be built in brick and stone only, with no overhanging jetties. There should be guttering with pipes, not spouts, and the Thames was to have proper quays, accessible by fire engines. Smoke-producing and other dangerous industries were to be sited together, a plan that pleased Evelyn, who had written Fumifugium, one of the first treatise on air pollution in London, in 1661. Royal surveyor Wren was put in charge of the complex rebuild, working closely with his friend Robert Hooke, the city surveyor (and another polymath, known as an inventor, physicist, astronomer, biologist and artist). Some structures had survived. The church of St Katherine Cree acted as a canteen for the thousands of labourers building the new city. Its brand-new rose window had been based on one in the old St Paul’s and, today, provides an idea as to how the previous cathedral looked. The Guildhall needed a new roof, but was otherwise relatively unscathed. A merchant’s house, now the OldWine Shades in Martin Lane, and one of the city’s last half-timbered buildings, 41–42 Cloth Fair also survived both the Great Fire and the Second World War. Oddly, there are very few surviving private houses. Lack of good quality materials and poor workmanship ensured most fell down quickly. Wren was very fussy about his materials, ensuring the great public buildings of the time, including St Paul’s Cathedral, were built to last. Man with the plan: Christopher Wren Scientist, mathematician, architect, engineer, Christopher Wren was one of a growing group of 17th-century polymaths. The son of a rector, he had grown to prominence as a professor of astronomy, first at London’s Gresham College, then Oxford. He mingled with the great minds of the day and became a founding member of the Royal Society. When Wren visited Paris, he became inspired by continental baroque design, which, combined with his love of physics and engineering, created his own unique style. In charge of rebuilding London, Wren grew frustrated that his original plans were rejected, but he oversaw 51 new churches (23 still survive). His piéce de resistance was, of course, St Paul’s Cathedral. It was a building site before the fire, with piecemeal renovation ongoing instead of Wren’s requested wholesale demolition, which had been refused. But during the Great Fire, the wooden scaffolding surrounding the building created a mini-furnace – so Wren got his way after all. He was knighted in 1673 and went on to design many other famous London landmarks, including the royal hospitals at Greenwich and Chelsea. Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of Restoration London London demanded a monument to the great disasters, and Christopher Wren was happy to oblige. He – and his friend Robert Hooke – couldn’t bear the idea of a useless pillar at a time stone was so precious, so the pair of fanatical astronomers sneakily created a precision-instrument, disguised as a classical column. Opened in 1677, its spiral staircase has an open centre, with a secret door at the gilded urn at the top. This meant that Wren and Hooke could sit in an underground room, with their zenith telescope pointed through the stairs and the open trapdoor towards the heavens. Sadly, the only thing the two scientists couldn’t control was the rumble of traffic on the cobbled streets outside, which made their telescope practically unusable. Who was to blame for the Great Fire of London? Everyone looked to blame someone for the fire, with Roman Catholics under most suspicion, followed closely by foreigners. Things got ugly. Then, out of the blue, French watchmaker Robert Hubert confessed. His story was shaky – he claimed he started the fire in Westminster, despite the flames never even reaching that far, then changed his tale to Pudding Lane, the fire’s base. Hubert’s mental condition was clearly unstable. The Earl of Clarendon watched his trail and described him as “a poor, distracted wretch”. Even the judge didn’t believe him, but he stuck to his story and all they could do was hang him. After his death, it was discovered Hubert hadn’t even been in London when the fire started. Much of the blame culture was so Londoners could avoid looking at themselves. Thomas Vincent, a Puritan preacher, published God’s Terrible Voice in the City by Plague and Fire in 1667, voicing what many secretly suspected – that God punished them for their sinful ways, not least those of Charles II’s extravagant court. In 1681, a plaque blaming papists for the fire was erected in Pudding Lane. It had to be removed in the 18th century, not as it offended Catholics, but as it caused congestion as people stopped to read it. An inscription on the Monument itself, also blaming the Roman church, wouldn’t be removed until the 1830s. This article was first published in the September 2016 issue of BBC History Revealed Great Fire of London: 10 facts Historian Rebecca Rideal shares 10 lesser-known facts about the Great Fire of London On 5 September 1666, the 33-year-old Samuel Pepys climbed the steeple of the ancient church of All Hallows-by-the-Tower and was met with the “the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw; everywhere great fires, oyle-cellars, and brimstone, and other things burning”. Leaving the church, he wandered along Gracechurch Street, Fenchurch Street and Lombard Street towards the Royal Exchange, which he found to be “a sad sight” with all the pillars and statues (except one of Sir Thomas Gresham) destroyed. The ground scorched his feet and he found nothing but dust, ash and ruins. It was the fourth day of the Great Fire of London and, though some parts of the city would continue to burn for months, the worst of the destruction was finally over. Thanks in part to Pepys’s vivid diary entries, the story of the Great Fire is well known. Alongside the fortunes of Henry VIII’s wives, the Battle of Britain and the fate of Guy Fawkes, it forms part of a scattering of familiar islands in the muddy quagmire of British history. We all know, roughly speaking, what happened: during the early hours of 2 September 1666, a fire broke out in Thomas Farriner’s bakehouse on Pudding Lane, which blazed and spread with such ferocity and speed that within a few days the old City of London was reduced to a charred ruin. More than 13,000 houses, 87 churches and 44 livery halls were destroyed, the historic city gates were wrecked, and the Guildhall, St Paul’s Cathedral, Baynard’s Castle and the Royal Exchange were severely damaged – in some cases, beyond repair. Those with more than a passing knowledge of the crucial facts might be aware of accounts of King Charles II fighting the fire alongside his brother, the Duke of York; of Samuel Pepys taking pains to bury his prized parmesan cheese; or of the French watchmaker Robert Hubert meeting his death at Tyburn after (falsely) claiming to have started the blaze. Here are 10 more facts you may not know about the Great Fire of London… The Great Fire of London did not start on Pudding Lane Thomas Farriner’s bakehouse was not located on Pudding Lane proper. Hearth Tax records created just before the fire place Farriner’s bakehouse on Fish Yard, a small enclave off Pudding Lane. His immediate neighbours included a waterbearer named Henry More, a sexton [a person who looks after a church and churchyard] named Thomas Birt, the parish ‘clearke’, a plasterer named George Porter, one Alice Spencer, a widow named Mrs Mary Whittacre, and a turner named John Bibie. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/Billingsgate2C20London2C20pictured20in201598-5d952c0.jpg" width="1100" height="600" alt="Billingsgate, London, pictured in 1598. Billngsgate is a ward in London on the north side of the River Thames, between Tower and London Bridge. In 1666 the Great Fire of London began here in Pudding Lane. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)" title="Billingsgate" /> The Great Fire of London was not Thomas Farriner’s first brush with trouble In 1627, the then 10- or 11-year-old Thomas Farriner was discovered by a city constable wandering alone within the city walls, having run away from his master [it is not known why he had a master at this time]. He was detained at Bridewell Prison, where the incident was recorded in the book of minutes. During the 17th century, Bridewell (a former Tudor palace) was a kind of proto-correctional facility where young waifs and strays would often be sent to receive a rudimentary education, many of them then cherry-picked to become apprentices to the prison’s patrons. The Globe theatre fire of 1613 During the boy’s hearing, it transpired that he had attempted to run away from his master three or four times previously. Farriner was released, only to be detained once more in 1628 for the same reason. A year later he was apprenticed as a baker under one Thomas Dodson. Far from levelling the city, the Great Fire of London scorched the skin and flesh from the city’s buildings – but their skeletons remained The ruins of many of London’s buildings had to be demolished before rebuilding work could begin. A sketch from 1673 by Thomas Wyck shows the extent of the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral that remained. John Evelyn described the remaining stones as standing upright, fragile and “calcined”. What’s more, the burning lasted months, not days: Pepys recorded that cellars were still burning in March of the following year. With plenty of nooks and crannies to commandeer, gangs operated among the ruins, pretending to offer travellers a ‘link’ (escorted passage) – only to rob them blind and leave them for dead. Many of those who lost their homes and livelihood to the fire built temporary shacks on the ruins of their former homes and shops until this was prohibited. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/Old20St20Paul27s20Cathedral20burning20in20the20Great20Fire20of20London2C201666-9089390.jpg" width="900" height="550" alt="Old St Paul's Cathedral burning in the Great Fire of London, 1666. (Photo by Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="Old St Paul's Cathedral burning in the Great Fire of London, 1666. Artist: Wenceslaus Hollar" /> At the time of the Great Fire, England was engaged in a costly war with the Dutch Republic and was gearing up for one last battle The conflict, known as the Second Anglo-Dutch War, was the second of three 17th-century maritime wars to be fought between the English and the Dutch over transatlantic trade supremacy. By September 1666 there had already been five major engagements: the battle of Lowestoft (1665); the battle of Vågen (1665); the Four Days’ Battle (1666); St James’s Day Battle (1666); and Holmes’s Bonfire (1666). How the Great Fire of London revealed the city’s Roman past In the confusion of the blaze, some believed that the Great Fire of London had been started by Dutch merchants in retaliation for the last of these engagements – a vicious raid on the Dutch islands of Vlieland and Terschelling – which had occurred barely a month earlier. That attack had been orchestrated by Sir Robert Holmes (renowned for his short fuse and unpredictable nature) and resulted in the destruction of an estimated 150 Dutch merchant ships and, crucially, the torching of the town of West-Terschelling. While the attack was celebrated with bonfires and bells in London, it appalled the Dutch, and there was rioting in Amsterdam. Aphra Behn – at that time an English spy stationed in Antwerp – wrote how she had seen a letter from a merchant’s wife “that desires her husband to com [sic] to Amsterdam home for that theare [sic] never was so great a desolation & mourning”. Behn was supposed to travel to Dort to continue her espionage, but declared that she “dare as well be hang’d as go”. Listen | Alexander Larman and Nicholas Kenyon discuss the events and legacy of the 1666 blaze Though we do not know exactly how many people died as a result of the Great Fire of London, it was almost certainly more than commonly accepted figures In the traditional telling of the Great Fire story, the human cost is negligible. Indeed, only a few years after the blaze, Edward Chamberlayne claimed that “not above six or eight persons were burnt,” and an Essex vicar named Ralph Josselin noted that “few perished in the flames.” There was undoubtedly enough warning to ensure that a large proportion of London’s population vacated hazardous areas, but for every sick person helped out of their house, there must have been others with no one to aid them. What’s more, parish records hint at a far greater death toll than previously supposed. At the parish of St Giles Cripplegate, for example, the number of burials increased by a third (presumably a result of citizens from destroyed parishes using this surviving church). Interestingly, there was a disproportionate rise (by two-thirds) in the number of deaths due to being “aged” and an increase in deaths attributed to “fright”. Likewise, the parish records of St Boltoph Bishopsgate show that the mean age at the time of death rose by an astonishing 12 years, from 18.3 to 31.3. This suggests either that older people were more likely to die in the month of September or that, in an age in which infanticide was rife, the deaths of young infants were not being recorded – perhaps even both. The diarist John Evelyn certainly believed that the foul smell in the air at the time of the fire was caused by the bodies, beds and other combustible goods of “some poor creatures”, and the poet John Dryden – who, it must be said, was out of London at the time – wrote of “helpless infants left amidst the fire”. When reports reached France, a substantial loss of life was implied: “The letters from London speak of the terrible sights of persons burned to death and calcined limbs, making it easy to believe the terror though it cannot be exactly described. The old, tender children and many sick and helpless persons were all burned in their beds and served as fuel for the flames.” Test your knowledge of the Great Fire of London with our history quiz View Riddle on the source website Louis XIV of France offered to help It took more than a week for news of the fire to reach the French royal court in Paris, but when it did there was talk of little else. The Venetian ambassador in the French capital declared that “this accident… will be memorable through all the centuries.” Privately, Louis XIV must have been thrilled. It was wrongly believed that the fire had destroyed England’s magazine stores and that the English navy would be forced to retire. Because of a 1662 treaty with the Dutch Republic, France had been obliged to enter the Anglo-Dutch War on the side of the Dutch, but the French king had neither the appetite nor the navy to play an active role. Louis XIV publicly ordered that he would not tolerate “any rejoicings about it [the Great Fire], being such a deplorable accident involving injury to so many unhappy people”, and offered to send aid in the shape of food provisions and anything else that might be required to relieve the suffering of those left destitute. There had been a genuine plot to burn the City of London In April 1666, a group of parliamentarians led by John Rathbone and William Saunders were tried at the Old Bailey and found guilty of conspiring to assassinate Charles II, overthrow government and fire the City of London, letting down the portcullis to keep out assistance. The trial was recorded in the London Gazette, which revealed that the plotters purportedly had the support of a conspirator in Holland and had planned to execute their “Hellish design” on the anniversary of Oliver Cromwell’s death, 3 September. Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of Restoration London People let their imaginations run away with them By 6 September, news of the fire had travelled as far as Berwick, where local soldiers claimed that they had seen visions of “ships in the air”. Reporting the phenomenon back to Whitehall, one Mr Scott assured his contact that he believed it to have just been their imaginations. As he travelled across Wiltshire to gather more information about the fire, Bulstrode Whitelocke bumped into his friend Sir Seymour Pyle who had “had too much wine”. Pyle claimed that there had been a huge fight between 60,000 Presbyterians and the militia, which had resulted in the death and imprisonment of 30,000 rebels. Whitelocke soon discovered that Pyle had been “drunke & swearing & lying att almost every word”. The Great Fire of London was predicted A few weeks before the fire, one Mr Light claimed to have been asked by a “zealous Papist”: “You expect great things in ’66, and think that Rome will be destroyed, but what if it be London?” Meanwhile, five months before the fire Elizabeth Styles claimed to have been told by a Frenchman that at some point between June and October there would not be “a house left between Temple Bar and London Bridge”. Samuel Pepys kept a lion as a pet + 6 other remarkable facts about the famous diarist In 1651, an astrologer named William Lilly created a pamphlet entitled Monarchy or No Monarchy that contained illustrative predictions of the future state of England. The images depicted not only a city blazing with fire, but scenes of naval warfare, infestations of rodents, mass death and starvation. Unsurprisingly, Lilly was called in for questioning following the fire of 1666. Watch: Dan Jones talks to HistoryExtra about walking the route of the fire street by street, following its four-day trail of devastation as it raged through the city View oEmbed on the source website The Great Fire wasn’t the only blaze in London in 1666 London was thrown into a panic during the evening of 9 November when a fire broke out in the Horse Guard House, next to Whitehall Palace. It was believed that the blaze had been caused by a candle falling into some straw. According to Samuel Pepys, the whole city was put on alarm by the “horrid great fire” and a lady even fell into fits of fear. With drums beating and guards running up and down the streets, by 10pm the fire was extinguished, with little damage caused. Rebecca Rideal is a specialist factual television producer and writer whose credits include The Adventurers’ Guide to Britain, Bloody Tales of the Tower and David Attenborough’s First Life. She runs the online magazine The History Vault and is currently studying for her PhD on Restoration London during the Great Plague and the Great Fire at University College London. This list of facts was first published on HistoryExtra in September 2016 Great Fire of London: through the eyes of Samuel Pepys Dominic Sandbrook describes the events of 2 September 1666 – the date that the City of London was engulfed by "an infinite great fire" – from the perspective of Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys was fast asleep when, at three in the morning of Sunday 2 September 1666, one of his maids, Jane Birch, banged on the door with the news that there was a "great fire" in the City of London. "So I rose and slipped on my nightgowne," Pepys wrote later, "and went to her window." There he saw the telltale tinge of red in the distance. In fact, the fire had already been blazing for a couple of hours, having broken out in Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane. The parish constables thought they should demolish the neighbouring houses to stop it spreading, but the lord mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, was not convinced. "Pish!" he famously remarked. "A woman could piss it out." To be fair, he was not alone in his view that the fire would soon be contained. From his window in Seething Lane, Pepys thought little of it, "and so went to bed again and to sleep". By seven in the morning, when Pepys woke again, it seemed that the worst must be over; from his window, he “saw the fire not so much as it was and further off”. But then Jane reappeared with bad news. Almost 300 houses, she said, had burned down already; now the fire had reached Fish Street, near London Bridge. Alarmed, Pepys pulled on his clothes and walked to the Tower, where he went up to get a better view. “And there,” he recorded, “I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side the end of the bridge.” His heart overflowing with worry, he scurried down to the waterside and called for a boat, and now the full scale of the disaster became clear. The Thames presented a spectacle of calamity, “everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the waterside to another.” Even the pigeons, he noticed, seemed transfixed by the catastrophe: “loth to leave their houses,” they “hovered about the windows” until their wings caught fire and they fell to earth. By now it was mid-morning. Whipped up by the eastern wind, the flames were leaping from house to house, consuming all in their path. Built from wood and straw, clustered together in tight alleys, London’s tenements were the perfect tinderbox, their overhanging jetties making it easier for the fire to move from street to street. At Whitehall, a frightened Pepys warned Charles II that “unless his majesty did command houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire”. Clearly much troubled, the king ordered him to find the lord mayor, and to tell him “to spare no houses, but to pull down before the fire every way”. But when Pepys caught up with Sir Thomas Bloodworth in Canning Street, the mayor was like “a fainting woman”, with a handkerchief tied around his face to protect him from the smoke. “Lord! what can I do?” Bloodworth cried. “I am spent: people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.” And so the fire burned on. In Thames Street, stores of pitch and tar were ablaze; in neighbouring streets, warehouses of oil, brandy and wine were up in flames. Pepys himself went off for dinner, which, he recorded, was “extraordinarily good”. But when he emerged, it was to scenes of utter chaos, the streets full of weeping families and soot-stained refugees. That night, he and his wife went for a drink on the South Bank, the City glowing red in the night. “It made me weep to see it,” Pepys wrote. “The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruins.” The inferno blazed on, all Monday and all Tuesday, only dying down when the wind fell on Wednesday. In the long run, it was the making of modern London: without the fire, there would be no St Paul’s and far fewer Wren churches. But at the time, there seemed no consolation. The smouldering city seemed like a vision of the Apocalypse, wrote the diarist John Evelyn. “London was, but is no more.” Dominic Sandbrook is the author of State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970–1974 (Allen Lane)
How the Great Fire of London revealed the city’s Roman past
The Great Fire of London obliterated an estimated four-fifths of the City of London, engulfing more than 13,000 houses and almost 90 parish churches. But, as historian Alison Cooley explains, the fire also unearthed a fascinating relic from London's Roman past – the tombstone of a Roman soldier named Vivius Marcianus
The name of one man stands out in accounts of the aftermath of the Great Fire of London: Christopher Wren. The renowned architect masterminded the rebuilding of some 50 churches including the new St Paul’s Cathedral, which also became his memorial, as his epitaph proclaims: Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice – “Reader, if you seek a memorial, look around you.” Less well known, though, is another aspect of the fire: that it revealed elements of London’s Roman past. In 1669, on the site where St Martin’s Church was to be rebuilt on Ludgate Hill, Christopher Wren uncovered a large slab of limestone depicting a full-length male figure below a Latin text. Despite the fact that the stone was over two metres high, it had remained hidden for hundreds of years, having been used as building material during the construction of the earlier medieval church. The sockets cut into the surface of the stone when it was reused are still clearly visible. Read more | The story of the Great Fire of London The slab was a tombstone for a Roman soldier named Vivius Marcianus. The epitaph reads: “To the spirits of the dead. Ianuaria Martina, most dutiful wife, set up the monument for Vivius Marcianus, centurion of the 2nd Legion Augusta”. The 2nd Legion Augusta came to Britain during the Claudian invasion of AD 43 and remained until the Romans withdrew from the province. By the middle of the second century AD the legion was based at Caerleon in south Wales, but it was quite usual for individual soldiers to be posted to the provincial capital. It seems likely, therefore, that Vivius Marcianus was in London on secondment to the staff of the provincial governor. On its rediscovery, the stone was immediately appreciated for its historical value. It was transported to Oxford at the expense of the archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon, who had longstanding ties to the university, having been fellow and warden of All Souls College, as well as university pro-vice chancellor and chancellor. He was also the benefactor of the Sheldonian Theatre, built between 1664 and 1669 to the design of Christopher Wren while he sat as Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. The tombstone was displayed in the Garden of Antiquities next to the Sheldonian Theatre. As a relic of Roman London, it was an appropriate addition to the classically inspired design of the theatre and its environs, joining a display of other classical inscriptions from the collection of John Selden, presented in alcoves built into the theatre’s enclosure wall and, on John Evelyn’s suggestion, protected from over-curious visitors by a hedge of prickly holly. In this way the tombstone of Vivius Marcianus came to contribute to the grand Roman atmosphere evoked by the theatre, with its painted ceiling recalling the open-air ambience of the theatre of Marcellus at Rome, and the bearded stone heads surmounting the area’s iron railings outside. Read more | Who were the gladiators of ancient Rome? Thereafter, the tombstone regularly featured in historical works on the development of London. Rather bizarrely, interpretations of the physical appearance of Vivius Marcianus himself – the actual relief having become badly worn, leaving viewers free to reconstruct it as they saw fit – went through various transformations, reflecting both contemporary fashions and changing perceptions of Roman Britain. The figure carved in the niche is roughly three-quarters life size – about 1.3 metres (four feet) tall. He stands facing the viewer, and is represented wearing a short tunic, belt and cloak, carrying a staff in his right hand and what appears to be a scroll in his left. The wooden staff appears to mark him out as a centurion in the Roman army. In Thomas Gale’s Antonini Iter Britanniarum of 1709 the Roman is illustrated as a figure with short hair, wielding a sword and staff as he stands ready for action, whereas John Horsley in his Britannia Romana: or the Roman Antiquities of Britain of 1732 depicted him with ringlets. George Alexander Cooke in 1813 described him as a prototype Highlander: “a plaid flung over his breast”, holding “a sword of vast length, like the claymore of the later Highlander”. Nor was it his personal appearance alone that could be reinterpreted. Humphrey Prideaux’s Marmora Oxoniensia of 1676 showed him holding a long, pointed sword rather than the vine-staff distinctive of the Roman centurion. Listen on the podcast | Alexander Larman and Nicholas Kenyon discuss the events and legacy of the 1666 blaze There was a tendency for historians to look only at illustrations of the figure rather than the monument itself. In 1790 Thomas Pennant argued that the figure’s long hair (as depicted in Prideaux’ reconstruction, but not the actual relief) was proof that Marcianus was a soldier of the cohors Britanorum and that he was “dressed and armed in the manner of the country”. In 1841, however, Charles Knight criticised this tendency of antiquarians to interpret Marcianus as a “British-born” soldier precisely because they relied heavily on inaccurate drawings. He cannily observed that “in truth nearly all the points of his attire and accoutrements are so uncertainly delineated on the mutilated stone that anything like a complete or consistent picture of the whole can only be made out by an exercise of fancy.” If you want to decide for yourself what Vivius Marcianus may have looked like, visit the Museum of London, where this tombstone is now on display. Professor Alison Cooley is head of the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick This article was first published on HistoryExtra in 2016
London history quiz – how much do you know about the city?
Test your knowledge of London's history – from its architecture and place names to notable events and famous residents...
View Riddle on the source website Learn more about the history of London Questions by Nick Rennison and Travis Elborough, authors of London Quiz (2014)
The earthquakes that rocked Georgian London (plus three more seismic events that shaped history)
Houses collapsed, sheep ran wild, Westminster Abbey shook and the people trembled in fear of Armageddon. Andrew Robinson describes what happened when a series of earthquakes struck London in 1750, a chain of events that prompted the birth of seismology ...
Just after 12.30pm on 8 February 1750, Britain’s lord chancellor was sitting in Westminster Hall with the Courts of King’s Bench and Chancery when the room began to shake. For a moment everyone thought the great edifice was going to collapse on their heads. In Lincoln’s Inn Fields, meanwhile, Newcastle House trembled so much that the Duke of Newcastle sent out his servant to enquire what had happened from a neighbour, the physicist Gowin Knight. The servant found Knight busy investigating the signs of disturbance in his own residence, including a bed that had moved. In Gray’s Inn, a lamp-lighter very nearly fell from his ladder. At Leicester House, home of the Prince of Wales, the foundations were believed to be sinking. Throughout the City and Westminster, people felt their desks lurch, chairs shook, doors slammed, windows rattled and crockery clattered on its shelves. In Leadenhall Street, part of a chimney fell. In Southwark, south of the Thames, a slaughterhouse with a hay-loft collapsed. Little did they know it, but Londoners were being shaken and stirred by the first of several earthquakes that would strike England that year. Although small – with an estimated magnitude of just 2.6, according to today’s British Geological Survey – the epicentre of the 8 February quake was shallow and centred beneath the capital, apparently around London Bridge. So the city received a considerable jolt. This wasn’t the first, nor the last, year in which the earth would move under London. In 1580, an earthquake beneath the English Channel collapsed part of the white cliffs at Dover, killed two children in London, rang the great bell in the Palace of Westminster and was referred to in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In 1692, another thronged the streets of London with confused crowds. A third quake, with its epicentre at nearby Colchester, rattled the Houses of Parliament in 1884. Puzzled MPs were halted in their tracks, jolted against walls or felt papers and briefcases jerked from their hands. They suspected a Guy Fawkes-style explosion, perhaps set off by the notorious Dynamiters then being prosecuted for their Irish nationalist activities. But it was 1750, the so-called ‘Year of Earthquakes’ that triggered a country-wide obsession with seismic events and kick-started the scientific study of the subject. So, strange as it is to report, seismology began not in seismic California or Japan but in stable Britain. At first, an earthquake was not accepted as an explanation for the 8 February tremor – so improbable did it appear to be. London’s 1692 shock was too distant to be remembered. Instead, there were theories about cannon-fire and exploding powder magazines. Then it was said that Isaac Newton, before his death in 1727, had predicted the jolt by calculating that Jupiter would approach close to Earth in 1750. Within two or three weeks, Londoners began to forget the strange experience. Almost exactly four weeks after the first shock, at 5:30am on 8 March, came the second. It was more pronounced, and covered five times the area – a circle with a diameter of 40 miles ,with its centre roughly three miles north of London Bridge. Two houses in Whitechapel collapsed, and several chimneys fell in various parts of London, as did stones from the new towers of Westminster Abbey. Violent vibration Horace Walpole, man of letters and politician, was in bed in central London. Three days later, he reported to a friend: “On a sudden I felt my bolster lift up my head; I thought somebody was getting from under my bed, but soon found it was a strong earthquake, that lasted near half a minute, with a violent vibration and great roaring. I rang my bell; my servant came in, frightened out of his senses: in an instant we heard all the windows in the neighbourhood flung up. I got up and found people running into the streets, but saw no mischief done: there has been some; two old houses flung down, several chimneys, and much china-ware.” The president of the Royal Society, antiquarian Martin Folkes, was also in bed. Reporting to the society that very day, he noted that the vibration and noise could not have been that of a passing cart or coach – to which many compared it – because everything was quiet at such an early hour. He remarked that the shock had been felt on the outskirts of London: “I sent a servant out about 7 o’clock, and he met a countryman, who was bringing a load of hay from beyond Highgate, and who was on the other side of the town when the shock happened; he did not, he said, feel it, as he was driving his waggon; but that the people he saw in the town of Highgate were all greatly surprised, saying they had had their houses very much shocked, and that the chairs in some were thrown about in their rooms.” Near Holland House, in west London, the bailiff of Henry Fox, while counting his sheep, observed the dry, solid ground move like a quagmire or quicksand, causing much alarm among the animals and some crows nesting in nearby trees. In A History of British Earthquakes, Charles Davison notes that “cats started up, dogs howled, sheep ran about, a horse refused to drink, the water being so much agitated, in several ponds fish leaped out of the water and were seen to dart away in all directions”. A slight tremor occurred on 9 March, and then came a powerful rumour: a third shock, exactly a month after the second one, would swallow up London. The rumour was started by an army trooper who would eventually be despatched to Bedlam, London’s lunatic asylum. By 4 April, doomsday had somehow advanced to the very next day, and panic took hold. “This frantic terror prevails so much, that within these three days 730 coaches have been counted passing Hyde Park corner, with whole parties removing into the country,” reported a sceptical Walpole. “Several women have made earthquake gowns; that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all tonight.” Superstitious fears That Walpole was not exaggerating is confirmed by the ‘Historical Chronicle’ of April published in the monthly Gentleman’s Magazine. For 4 April, this reads: “Incredible numbers of people, being under strong apprehensions that London and Westminster would be visited with another and more fatal earthquake… left their houses, and walked in the fields, or lay in boats all night; many people of fashion in the neighbouring villages sat in their coaches till daybreak; others went to a greater distance, so that the roads were never more thronged, and lodgings were hardly to be procured at Windsor; so far, and even to their wits’ end, had their superstitious fears, or their guilty conscience, driven them.” Part of the blame must undoubtedly fall on the activities of religious preachers during March. Charles Wesley, a founder of the growing Methodist movement, bluntly sermonised: “God is himself the Author, and sin is the moral cause.” A leading clergyman, William Whiston, successor to Newton as Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, expressed his belief that the end of the world was close at hand, as predicted by 99 signals. No 92 was that there would occur a terrible – but, to good men, a joyful – earthquake, which would destroy one tenth of an eminent city. Given his standing in London society, Whiston’s ideas were seriously discussed. But it was the warnings of the bishop of London, Thomas Sherlock, that attracted the most attention. Sherlock’s A Letter to the Clergy and Inhabitants of London and Westminster… on Occasion of the Late Earthquakes apparently sold 10,000 copies in two days, was reprinted several times, and is said to have sold more than 100,000 copies in less than six months. Sherlock urged his readers to repent, and to ignore “little philosophers, who see a little, and but very little into natural causes… not considering that God who made all things, never put anything out of his own power”. When London failed to fall, there was a general air of sheepishness in society. Many people simply blanked the earthquakes from their memory, and no attempt was made to protect London’s buildings from future shocks. Natural philosophers, however, remained fascinated. At this time, despite Newton’s achievements in understanding the solar system, the science of the Earth had advanced no further than the musings of the ancient Greeks such as Aristotle, who postulated a ‘central fire’ inside underground caverns, which then collapsed, generating earthquakes. By the year’s end, almost 50 articles and letters on the subject had been read before the Royal Society, which were promptly published as an appendix to its Philosophical Transactions. One of the society’s fellows was John Michell, a Cambridge astronomer who had a remarkable range of interests, including geology. During the 1750s, Michell examined eyewitness reports from England in 1750 and from the devastating Lisbon earthquake in 1755, and analysed them according to Newtonian mechanics. His important if flawed paper, ‘Conjectures Concerning the Cause and Observations upon the Phaenomena of Earthquakes’, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1760, correctly concluded that earthquakes were “waves set up by shifting masses of rock miles below the surface” – although his explanation for this shifting relied wrongly on explosions of steam, as underground water encountered underground fires. There were two types of earthquake wave, he said: a “tremulous” vibration within the Earth, followed by an undulation of the Earth’s surface – once again coming close to the truth. Despite being a clergyman, Michell boldly left the divine out of his analysis: the first thinker about earthquakes to do so since the ancient Greeks. Thus, the English ‘Year of Earthquakes’ led to the first recognisably scientific steps in understanding this influential, but still embarrassingly unpredictable, phenomenon. 3 more earthquakes that shaped history Lisbon, 1755 A seismic event that dealt Portugal’s empire a grievous blow The sudden destruction of Lisbon by an earthquake and tsunami in 1755 exerted an influence on 18th-century Europe as far-reaching as the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs in the 20th century. This is epitomised by Voltaire’s 1759 novel, Candide, satirising religious explanations of the disaster and the philosophy of optimism. By the 19th century, images of a shaking Lisbon were icons of natural disaster comparable with the smothering of Pompeii and Herculaneum by the eruption of Vesuvius. In Portugal, the devastation accelerated the long-term decline of the country in Europe and the colonial world, which had been caused by its over-reliance on gold revenues from its colony Brazil and what many saw as the pernicious influence of Jesuit orthodoxy. Although Lisbon was gradually, and impressively, rebuilt under the near-dictatorship of the marquess of Pombal, the country continued to weaken economically, especially after Brazil gained its independence in 1822. Caracas, 1812 Did Venezuela’s agony lead to a political revolution? An earthquake in Venezuela in 1812 destroyed much of the country’s buildings including those of its capital, Caracas. The damage happened to be worst in the areas controlled by Simón Bolívar’s recently proclaimed First Republic of Venezuela and relatively light in areas sympathetic to the colonial ruler, Spain – a fact immediately exploited by the local Catholic authorities, who supported Spain. By Bolívar’s own admission, the earthquake directly precipitated the republic’s collapse four months later under attack by Spanish forces. Captured by the Spanish, Bolívar was sent into exile, and settled in Cartagena. There he unexpectedly became the leader of a much wider independence movement than the one he had led in Venezuela. So, indirectly, the 1812 Caracas earthquake may have led to the birth of new South American nations – through Bolívar’s liberation of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Peru from Spanish rule in the 1820s. San Francisco, 1906 An economic powerhouse rose from the rubble of this natural disaster The fire that destroyed three-quarters of San Francisco over three days in 1906 was started by an earthquake that disabled the water supply of the city, including its fire hydrants. San Francisco recovered remarkably quickly, largely because the city authorities, local businesses and even the insurance industry treated the disaster as incendiary rather than seismic, so that residents were permitted to claim on their fire insurance and investors were not discouraged from financing reconstruction through fear of future earthquakes. And no attempt was made to introduce anti-seismic emergency and building regulations. Within a decade, San Francisco was rebuilt and its economy was expanding. In the 1950s, it spawned the nearby industrial area, today known as Silicon Valley, also located on the San Andreas fault. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake became history’s leading example of how a great earthquake can trigger the ‘creative destruction’ of a city. Andrew Robinson is the author of Earth-Shattering Events: Earthquakes, Nations and Civilization, published by Thames & Hudson This article was first published in the April 2016 issue of BBC History Magazine
23 things you (probably) didn't know about No 10 Downing Street, the official residence of Britain's prime ministers
Felicity Day takes a glimpse behind the world’s most famous front door, reveals 23 fascinating facts about the official residence of the prime minister and the events that have taken place within its walls
It was given as a gift from a king In 1732 a grateful King George II presented Sir Robert Walpole with a house on Downing Street. Walpole, who is usually recognised as the first to have and to use the powers of a prime minister, refused the property as a personal gift. Instead, he agreed to accept it as an official residence for the First Lord of the Treasury, to which post – held by Walpole for more than 20 years – “he got it annexed for ever”. No 10 Downing Street was initially No 5 The king’s gift was, in fact, two houses: one fronting onto Downing Street and a larger one overlooking Horse Guards behind. Walpole moved in only once the two had been combined and refurbished, becoming the first premier to call Downing Street home in September 1735. The house was then actually No 5, and remained so until 1779 when it was renumbered. Its historic colour is the result of air pollution No 10 Downing Street’s distinctive brickwork is not actually black – restoration works in the 1960s revealed that the terrace was built with yellow bricks, subsequently blackened by two centuries of inner-city air pollution. A black colourwash is used today to maintain its historic appearance. A brewery once stood the land The land on which Downing Street stands was once part of the ancient Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman settlements of Thorney Island. Later home to a brewery, it was in the hands of the Crown by the reign of Henry VIII, sitting on the edge of the king’s vast Whitehall Palace site. A house there was leased by Elizabeth I to one of her favourites, Sir Thomas Knyvet, in 1581, and it was his niece, Mrs Hampden, who was residing in it when the land was confiscated under Oliver Cromwell (although she still continued to live there). The house was built by one of Oliver Cromwell's spymasters A “perfidious rogue” and “ungrateful villain” was how diarist Samuel Pepys described the man who gave his name to Britain’s most famous street. Sir George Downing was a former preacher who became one of Cromwell’s most high-profile spymasters in the wake of Charles I’s execution in 1649, only to switch sides when the Restoration loomed. Having traded his secrets for a pardon from the exiled Charles II, Downing went on to round up his former comrades for execution, receiving a baronetcy from his grateful king and settling into a new life as a government administrator – admired for his capabilities, but despised for his self-interest. Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of living in Restoration London The former Crown land in Whitehall, Downing had acquired in 1654. Undeterred when the transfer was declared null and void at the Restoration in 1660, Downing brazenly told the king that it had come to him in payment of a debt, and was granted a lease of the site and liberty to build on it. With an eye solely to profit, he erected a series of 15 to 20 terraced houses and gave the street his name. It wasn't built to last Sited on boggy ground and cheaply constructed with shallow, ineffective foundations, Sir George Downing’s terrace was not built to last. An £11,000 ‘Great Repair’ begun in the 1780s was the first of a series of works that failed to fix the issues. Having suffered a battering in the Blitz, No 10 was in a desperate state by the 1950s: riddled with dry rot, the risk of fire was so great a firefighter was employed full-time, and there were concerns that the uneven floors might give way. Demolition was, however, rejected as an “act of impiety” and in 1960, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan moved out while the foundations were strengthened and the building renewed – a project that took three years and cost over £1 million. One prime minister used it to try and convince prostitutes to change their ways William Ewart Gladstone had one of the most eccentric hobbies of all the prime ministers who have ever resided in Downing Street: late in the evening he would walk to Soho, pick up one or two ladies of the night and take them back to No. 10, where he would attempt to convince them of the error of their ways. The iconic black door was briefly painted green The most famous front door in the world has not always been black: in 1908 it was painted green on the instructions of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, only to go back to black at the end of his tenure in 1916. Originally made of oak, the door was replaced with a heavy-duty steel version for security reasons in the 1990s. A 'lady in pink' may haunt the house Only one prime minister in history has ever reported a ghostly presence at No 10 Downing Street: Harold Wilson and his cleaner both claimed they had – separately – seen a lady dressed in pink in the private apartment. Alms have been given from its door Some of Downing Street’s most famous visitors have been greeted and photographed on its doorstep, but during the 18th-century premiership of Lord North you were more likely to find a group of poor people huddled there, as every Sunday he handed out money and food. Protestors used to be able to march up to the front door In the centuries before the famous gates to Downing Street arrived in 1989, protesters could – and did – march right up to the prime minister’s front door: most notably the suffragettes. Read more | Emily Davison: the suffragette martyr During the so-called ‘battle of Downing Street’ on 22 November 1910, a total of 159 people (including three men) were arrested while taking part in protests against Herbert Asquith. The suffragettes would return to Downing Street time and again during the course of their campaign, breaking windows, chaining themselves to railings and directly confronting politicians. The IRA attacked No 10 in 1991 The Irish militants targeted No 10 on 7 February 1991. Prevented from getting into Downing Street itself by the gates installed less than two years previously, they fired their three mortar bombs from a transit van parked out on Whitehall. There were no mod-cons for incoming prime ministers When Labour’s Ramsay MacDonald came to power in January 1924, he and daughter Ishbel were shocked to find that the state provided so little furniture for the large and rambling house at Downing Street, and none of the cutlery, crockery or silver necessary for official entertaining – not even any bedsheets. Unlike most of his predecessors, MacDonald had no luxury country home on which to call, and the provisions of his modest house were nowhere near sufficient. Ishbel was sent to the January sales to stock up, and would later recall having to help her father by funding more items from a small personal inheritance. Nor were there any servants Engaging (and paying for) Downing Street’s domestic staff has always been the responsibility of the tenant. During David Lloyd George’s tenure the staff were all Welsh nationals, who spoke to each other – and often the prime minister’s family – in Welsh. By the mid-19th century it was surrounded by brothels and gin parlours Minutes from the Houses of Parliament, we can think of no better location for the prime minister’s residence than Downing Street. It was not so in the early 1800s. By then, it was “a dingy solitary street with a dirty public house on the corner and a row of third-rate lodging houses between it and the Foreign Office” – a building which was itself dilapidated. The surrounding area was becoming seedier every year, too – by 1846 there were 170 brothels and 145 gin parlours within the vicinity. Plans to demolish the entire north-side terrace were seriously considered, but numbers 10, 11 and 12 survived. The gin craze: why did it sweep across London and much of England during the first half of the 18th century Not every prime minister has called it home It has never been a requirement for the prime minister to live at Downing Street. Many Georgian and Victorian premiers – including Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel and Viscount Palmerston – preferred to remain in their own London townhouses, using No 10 as an office, or allowing their chancellors to move in. Of the 31 men in office between 1735 and 1902, only 16 resided there. Some more recent prime ministers have elected to live in the spacious flat at No 11. One operation has been performed in the house The only operation known to have been carried out at No 10 is the removal of a facial cyst troubling William Pitt the Younger in 1786. He reportedly rebuked the surgeon for taking half-a-minute longer to perform the procedure than his estimate of six minutes. Royal visits are not unheard of Although the monarch has not attended cabinet meetings regularly since the reign of George III, the royals have been frequent visitors to No 10. Queen Caroline came for breakfast a week after Sir Robert Walpole moved in; Edward VIII was smuggled in for secret talks with Stanley Baldwin about his proposed marriage to Wallis Simpson; and George VI risked the air raids to dine with Winston Churchill during the Second World War. 'Mousers' are among No 10's most important residents Mice have long stalked the corridors of No 10, meaning that government officials have often relied on ‘mousers’ for help. Larry is just the latest in a long line of feline residents, including Winston Churchill’s so-called ‘Munich Mouser’. Churchill’s nickname for the cat reflected the fact that the moggie’s previous owner, Neville Chamberlain, had signed the controversial Munich Agreement in support of German appeasement. What was written on Neville Chamberlain’s piece of paper? The first Downing Street Christmas tree was introduced by Thatcher Downing Street’s Christmas tree is one of its more recent traditions, begun by Margaret Thatcher. Since 1999, it has been supplied by the winner of a competition organised by the British Christmas Tree Growers Association. It was a wartime hub in WWI, but not WWII During the First World War, No 10 was a hive of activity. In January 1917, David Lloyd George set up a group of wooden huts on the lawn (known as the ‘garden suburb’) in order to house extra staff. It was much quieter in the Second World War. Amid concerns about the house’s stability, Winston Churchill was persuaded to move into a flat above the underground bunker we now know as the Churchill War Rooms. He did, however, insist on using No. 10 regularly for meetings and dinners, so certain rooms were reinforced with steel and a shelter was constructed under the house, where the prime minister was once forced to seek refuge with George VI. There are 61 years separating the oldest and youngest incumbents Taking office aged 24 in 1783, William Pitt the Younger is Britain’s most youthful premier to date – but also the youngest to live at No 10, moving in as chancellor aged 23. William Ewart Gladstone was the oldest incumbent, leaving Downing Street at the age of 84. It is unclear why the zero in 'No 10' is askance Theories abound as to why the zero on No 10’s front door is slightly askew. Some believe the original number was badly fixed and the position has been forever preserved in tribute; others that its angle was deliberate, replicating the tilted letter ‘O’ in an ancient Roman style of lettering that had been adopted as a typeface by the Ministry of Works. Felicity Day is a freelance writer specialising in the history of the Georgian and Regency eras
In a talk from our 2019 History Weekend in Winchester, Thomas Williams discusses the many impacts the Norse raiders had on the city of London
In a talk he delivered at our 2019 BBC History Magazine History Weekend in Winchester, historian, archaeologist and author Thomas Williams discusses the many impacts the Norse raiders had on the city of London.