Rebuilding and Legacy of London

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up history and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like How William Conquered England What it was like to live in the Georgian era And you can even hear the voice of Richard III We got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week And there's always something more to discover Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history. com slash subscribe Since the dawn of time, humanity has been at war. It has shaped the world around us. And if it somehow feels like we've been here before, it's because we have I'm David Boris. I'm a military historian, and on my new podcast Hostile History, I take us inside history's most defining wars and rebellions. From Gangghis Khan to the war in Iran, find out how the past can explain the present. search for and follow hostile history on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts In the early hours of the second of September, sixteen sixty six A small fire broke out of metidle bakery in pudding Lane Within five days, that fire had destroyed the vast majority of one of the largest cities in Europe If not the world It was a catastrophe, the great fire of London. Exactly what happened that week in sixteen sixty six. Well, here tell you about it is Adrian Tinnwood. He's a historian. He's a teacher. He's a writer. He's a consultant for the National Trust over here in the UK. and he's written a book called By Permission of Heaven, The Story of the Great Fire of London And we're going to get into it. We're going to find out why it happened, how it happened, just how bad the damage was and what it meant for London which was fascinatingly, on the threshold of becoming pretty much the biggest and richest city on Earth So it comes a remarkable time in London' story, and it's rather impressive that the city goes from being obliterated to a position of global hegemony in the space of a generation This is a classic episode of Dan Snows History. We're sharing with you because I've got some exciting news I want to tell you about. History hit has teamed up with voice maps. These are so clever these folks. An audio tour app where you can explore the places around the world where history happened at your own pace with leading historians and guides in your headphones, in your ears with you on the walk. By the way, actually it even works offline And so this guy, me, the one who iss talking right now is going to guide you Round the streets of London. I've released a guide so you can go to the places where the fire ripped through the old city So once you've listened to this stellner episode Plan your trip to London this summer and take my tour All you need to do after booking your flight, train, bus, cycle, whatever it is, is install the Voiceemap app from the App store or Google Play today Or go to voiceemap. m slash history hit. That's voicemap. m forward slash history hit. cheheck out Ts from your favorite history hit hosts. It's not just me folks or other ones too. But for now, to get a little taste of this extraordinary story, here's our classic episode with Adrian Tinniswood Enjoy Adrian, thank you very much for coming the podcast. It's great to be with you, Dan You know what Sometimes we feel a bit sorry for ourselves in the modern world, but then you think toselves well, we could be alive in the mid sixteen sixties. I mean it was A brutal time to be a Landonate We forget, you know the great plague the year before the Fire of London. that was appalling casualties. It was dreadful. And there something like a nine out of ten mortality rates. If you got the plague you died, basasically, certainly early on The bills of mortality, they're dreadful to hear. And of course anybody who is anybody cleared out leaving only the poor and the dedicated, certainly kind of dissenting ministers who hung around and took the place of Anglican clergy who were clearing off to Oxford or the south coast, those kind of dissenting ministers really came into their own then. They were the welfare system but looked after the plague victims Tell me about the streets of London even without plague festering in its shrouded streets. what did London look like in the mid sixteen sixties? And how big was it Yeah, it was small and that's the thing. The city of London itself, what wed call the square mile was home to about eighty thousand people What we will think of as greater London, the suburbs and some of the outlying areas al together. had a population of maybe two hundred and fifty three hundred thousand. It's hard to be precise, of course That's about the same size as Coventry today. Packed in, unlike contrry sa, I mean you're living cheap by j Most of the streets very narrow. You're living in mainly timber framed laugh and plaster houses. tyypically they're jetted out across streets so that On some of the narrower furfairs, you could lean out of your bedroom window and shake hands with your neighbour across the road. The sky is blotted out by these houses And does that mean that fires are your sort of particular threat in these c. I mean was a huge fire isn't the forgotten fire of London in the thirteenth century, I think it is when Huge chunk of the city was burned There were fires all the time down. if you think, we're looking at a world that was lit by fire. People were always airing their clothes by putting them in front of an open fire. They were looking for a chamber pot with a lighted candle under the bed, and fires took place all the time in London, all the time Was it a disaster waiting to happen? Yeah. but well I say yes. I mean in retrospect, yes, of course it was. At the time. It was an accident. It was a confluence. It was a meeting of three or four different events that any one of them wouldn't have done the harm they did The august sixteen sixty six was hot, it was dry 's been a drought all summer, so the buildings were tender to dry Then There's this general sense of foreboding as well. It's weird that There have been rumors about Cromwellian Rublicans mounting a coup, there was talk about a mysterious character called the prerecious man who was mobilizing a militia to march on London There was talk about a Messiah from the East A angle Sabbati Levi, who was gathering followers and was marching on Europe. People were twitching, but the big thing that was twidging people On the afternoon of september the second, sixteen sixty six, the big thing was the war We were at war And that's what mattered most. We were at war with the Dutch. the war being done quite well But that particular afternoon what everybody was talking about was the fact that a huge English fleet Commanded by Prince Rubin General Mon. was converging on the Dutch off Berlne And they were going to whip them They were going to absolutely whoo them. That's what everybody cared about. That's what everyone was talking about in the streets and It was as that fleet moved in on the Dutch But a wind blow up in the channel Just a breeze And that breeze grew stronger and stronger. And as the English engaged with the Dutch, Or hell broke loose. A gale hit both fleets, Masts were blown over, sails were blown out And both fleets ran for home. There was no battle. They just ran for home. They were crashing into each other. they were colliding, they were sinking The English fleet ran for the Isle of Whight to lick its wounds. But the point about all this If you're wondering what on earth I'm talking about, what this has got to do with the Great fire of London. The point about that is that That afternoon and evening, that gale. move up into Kent from a channel and that night It grew in strength as it moved up through Kent and it toppled chimneys and it lifted thatch And it hit London at about one o'clock on the morning of the second of September And just as it hit London Baker called Thomas Fariner forgot to put his oven now in pudding lane If those two things hadn't happened, if Fariner hadn't forgot to put his open out If that game will haven't hit, there will be no fire of London That is a beautiful description of what happened. but let me just before we go on here Adrien, you never need to apologize to me to give descriptions of what's happening in maritime history Let's be very clear about that. Longtime listeners this show We'll know that seventeenth century naval history is something that we can talk about all day. Before we talk about Thomas Fariner in the f You mentioned it hadnt rained all summer, there was a drought. I'm very interested in the fact that I was reading Jeffrey Parker's magnificent gigantic book about the seventeenth century climate catastrophe across the planet And he points out that many other fires weren' there was a great fire in what is now Tokyo that' thought to have killed one hundred thousand people in sixteen fifty seven, I think it was. So there's a climate change story, there's a climate breakdown story here as well Yeah, I mean, and there were big fires not only in London, you mentioned, but there were big fires all over England. I mean, Dorchester burned down in the early seventeenth century if I remember right, Northampton burned down in the sixixteen seventies, I think too go back to what I was saying earlier, it was a world lit by fire and that meant that fires broke out all the time. Most of the time, they weren't that serious. But occasionally they were. And there may be a climate story, a climate change story to talk about here. I'm not sure that we can associate climate change with the fact that you've got an entire society that depends on open flame accidents happen So Thomas Farrener, he's a baker Embers just popped out of his oven today and ignited what was nearby Well He always saw it wasn't his fault, but If I just accidentally burned down the second largest city in Christendam, I'd probably say it wasn't my fault either What seems to have happened, what we know is that in the early hours of the second of September, that Sunday morning Farigner's man servant woke him up, came upstairs and said The smoke coming up from the basement, which is where the ovens were And Faroner and his daughter, Hannah and the man servant tried to get downstairs and there was smoke. They couldn't get down to the ground floor So they clambered out of a bedroom window. and into their neighbour's bedchamber, which must have been quite a shock for their neighbour at two o'clock in the morning. Their maid servant had a fear of heights. So the story goes and she wouldn't jump. She wouldn't walk out onto the roof as she died She died of absumed of smoking inhalation and she was the first casualty of the fire of London They raised the alarm and it's not a big deal at this point. It's not a big deal. Certain things happened when the fire broke out Neighbourors would evacuate their houses usually. the parish wardens would be called You will get firefighting equipment. Most of were kept in the local church and most effective firefighting equipment was actually long poles with hooks on the end. pulling down thatch and for pulling down houses, in fact, to form fire breaks So everybody kind of milled around. The point is though that as they're milling around in pudding lane, as they're trying to put the fire out, this gale is blowing and it's blowing from the east, it's blowing westward, and it's fanning the flames As it fans those flames, some of the thatch lifts. Those embers fly into the sky and they land in streets next door. famously, a glowing ember landed in the stableyard. of an near on Fish street hill and ignited the straw. That was then blown up into the air and So fires spreading all the time. The gale is relentless. I mean, this gale will blow for three days. And it's the gale which causes the fire of London now I think So tell me about the mayor of London. He wasn't super concerned, was he? Thomas Blubwor Thomas Bloodworth was one of the unluckiest. London Mayors, I think, and that he'd Come into office in the middle of the plag So there was no kind of laordm show. there was no sort of big fuss, there was no pageant. He was sworn in a barbber shop r the back of the towower of London It was a bit of a frost for him. And then Just as he comes to the end of his year of office. He's called out two o'clock in the morning on this Sunday morning untld there's a fire because people are getting a bit anxious because the fire is starting to spread and they're starting to worry that maybe we need to do something dramatic. We need to start demolishing houses So they call them that and Bloodworth who's not a great man bless him, he's not a great man He says he can't authorize the pulling down of houses because he needs the permission of their owners and because the vast majority of property in London is rented The landlords could be anywhere. So he says, no We can't demolish houses, even though the fire is spreading. One of the ordens says to him, Well, lookook, you know, this is getting serious. and Bloodworth memorably, famously brilliantly saysus far as nothing a woman could piss this out And he went back to bed and a place in the history books Yeah. That's it, That's it. He's in there forever. So what stage do we think it started? literally, what time did it start? We know it started in the early hours of the morning of Sunday, the second of September And by what stage is it really a very serious situation On that Sunday morning, Samuel Peepes who's living a few streets away in Ceting Lane. He's living to the east of the foretheast of Pudding Lane is made wakes him up. and says that the smoke down on the keys down by the river, it looks as if there's several hundred houses burning And Samuel is quite anxious about this because he's got people coming for dinner and he's a bit worried that they're not be able to make it. This is his initial reaction to the Great Fire of London So we trust D down C a. In fact, he goes up to the towower. He's friendly with the constable of the Tower of London, so he goes up to the top of the Tower of London and he sees that The fire is spreading along the wharfs and quys of London and where you've got timber tar and flax all piled up The flames are moving along They're being pushed westward by this gale all the time And they're moving steadily along the streets. and wolves by the Thames So Samuel realizes that this is going to be quite serious. He gets in a boat and he sails up to Whitehall. Tell the king The king offers to send There's life guuards. there's no standing army at this time, but he's got life guuards and he offers to send basasically military help Peeps goes back into town He finds Thomas Bloodworth, who's got up again by this point and who is now running up and down cheheapside handkerchief on his head, saying Oh Lord, what shall I do? What shall I do So Pepe says, well, look, the king is offered to send in the troops effectively And Blubbus is overc of that. It's only a few years since General Munk has broken down the gates of the city and marched into the city of Lou. There's an understandable fear of military might, if you like, in the city of London But Bloodworth again makes this massively wrong decision. He says, we can handle this. We don't need the king's troops And then he goes back home poor old Ting You just can't get it right You're listening to Dan Snow's history here There's more to come Summer' here and that means travel season is in full swing, road trips, last minute flights, quick weekend getaways, or anything else that feels like an escape And sure, travel can be a little chaotic plans change, things go off track that's what makes it memorable When you're out there making the most of it, it help to have somewhere reliable waiting for you That's why Best Western hotels and resorts is such a solid option. It's cozy, convenient, and exactly what you need after a full day of exploring. Wandering or just figuring it out as you go. This summer get one thousand bonus points and a chance to win two hundred fifty thousand bonus points. So wherever you're headed, make your stay part of the journey and make it count with this limited time offer. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at bestwesttern. com No additional purchase necessary for sweeps, seeee bonus pointoints TinCs and Sweeps rules for details and visit bestwestern. com for complete terms and conditions What started the Civil War What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? and did the Vikings ever reach America I'm Don Weildm And on American History hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership Find American History Hit twice a week every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit Since the dawn of time, humanity has been at war. It has shaped the world around us. and if it somehow feels like we've been here before, it's because we have. I'm David Boris. I'm a military historian and on my new podcast Hostile History, I take us inside history's most defining wars and rebellions. fromrom Gangghis Khan to the war in Iran, find out how the past can explain the present Search for and follow hostile history on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts They did need the king's troops didn't they? What are the other I mean, there were bucket chains. What other options do they have? Yeah, there were bucket chains. There were a couple of fire engines in the city. They're not kind of bright red bells on top. They're massive sleds with ciss on top And remember that at this point The fire hose has not been invented, which means that you've got a kind of brass spout that you can spurt a dribble of water onto a fire But you've got to get really close to it to do it. and it's not a good idea to get that close to a fire. But anyway, there's a fire engine' b booughted down from Clockenwell It's dranked down by men who then move it to the bottom of Pudding Lane, to the riverbank to fill up the cisn so they can start spurting water at the fire They get too close to the bank The fire engine slides into the Thames and sails off down the river, and no one ever sees it again The important point about these initial stages, Dan, is that nobody is actually putting the fire out. Everybody's looking for themselves. Everybody's trying to evacuate their own goods There's looting going on all the way down the north bank of the Thames a merchant called Taswell who's got a house just to the east of Budding Lane near Bishop's gate. He rushes out and finds some men and gives them money to evacuate his goods to safety and they evacuate his goods to safety, he never sees him again. Order is breaking down. I think that's the important thing to note It's accelerated by the rumor that's going around already by Sunday evening that this is a terrorist attack This is an attack by the Dutch. They're setting fire to the city and it's a prelude to an invasion This isn't as crazy as it sounds a few weeks before this Force of English Marines under the lamboyant Sir Robert Holmes, who used to wear a gold lace suit and carry a monkey on his shoulder burned one hundred and fifty Dutch merchant ships and set fire to the town of Westter Shelling, Dutch town in what was called Rober Holes' bonfire. And everybody cheered. everyveryone thought this was great. We were burning out the Dutch So it was natural for them to think cryking is happening to us now they're getting their own back Anyone who looked foreign was beaten up in the streets. They tried to lynch people Rumors were spreading faster than the fire. Thomas Fariner's bakery suddenly became a Dutch baker who'd purposely burned his house. People were seen throwing firebombs through windows. None of it was true. But the xenophobia and the fear just spread right through the city. When I go to give talks at schools about the Great F of London that one thing kids always remember is Samuel Pes bearying his cheese. I know I know Tell me about that? Well, I mean, I think you've said it. He buried his par his own cheese, wasn't it? He must have loved that cheese. Peb' is the best of all the narratives about the fire. His is the most vivid But there's that moment where he's setting down no terms to get to Whitehall and he sees the pigeons that London is ke for food flluttering above their homes, their wings singed They dropped down into the flames. It's such a memorable image that these birds just fluttering and fluttering and then dying. Were many people dying It's a really good question And I'm going to say I don't know Fire, although it spread inexorably, it didn't spread that fast It spread maybe thirty yards an hour, thirty meters an hour or so. It wasn't The flash peopleeople were caught. We know of, I think there are eleven fatalities that we know of. I suspect there were quite a lot more than that. peopleeople who were just caught when fire broke out in front of them and behind them as what was happening in the streets of London. peopleeople work well, I would guess maybe forty or fifty. What we do know is that consistently in the aftermath of the fire, peopleople were thanking God that there were so few casualties The fire was seen as punishment and it depended on whose side were on. It was outer punishment because we had killed the king, Charles I or it was God's punishment because the good old cause, the Commonwealth with're backed off, it depends at which side you're on really as to who God was punishing But In spite of God punishing London He had shown mercy. And everybody says this. So it's pretty clear, I think there were surprisingly few casualties. Speaking of the King, he's likely s the Duke of Monmouth has got better things to do, but Charles II's in there getting involved, doesnn't he? Well, yes and no. I mean, he is in there getting involved. He's getting involved in a fairly kind of airy fairry way. He's riding around on his horse with a saddlebag full of coins, kind of flinging them up people and urging them to help with the fire In fact, it's his brother is James Duke of York, the future James II of England Wh is the absolute hero Don't me wrong, James Duke of York is king as James II. He has the political acumen of a chicken is useless as a king. We can all agree on that. Yeah, we can do that, can't we? We can do that As a man, he was a hero And this is a guy who the previous year Ass Lord Harbr of the fleet gone into battle against the Dutch had watched a round of chain shots as he was standing on the deck with all his senior officers. A round of chain shot hit the group He was miraculously almost unhurt His friends exploded around him. The only damage that James Duke of York had was a cut on his forearm from a skull splinter from his best friend And he didn't bat an eye, he didn't blink. I mean this guy is a really brave man and he's the fella who with his lifeguards rides down into the city and starts organizing proper fire prevention, they organise coordinance, they start to pull down the houses, they evacuate whole streets And he gets off his horse. He's not just kind of chucky money around He gets off his horse, he gets his shirt off and he starts throwing buckets of sand and water out it with the bask of them. He's an amazing man in the fire Samie didn't last, but He was a good man, a good man And which day is the peak of the fire? Is it the fourth of September It's the Tuesday. Yeah And that evening The rooyal exxchange is gone Every halls are gone A lot of the city But that evening young Thomas Taswell, a school boy at Westminster He looks up into the city, looks across Lambeth Marsh and he sees St. Paul's Cathedral. which is London This is the spiritual center. of the city, in fact of the country in many ways and He sees flames start to lick around St. Paul's Cathedral. St Pauls is being repai, the' scaffolding all over the roof flames atch that scaffold in that timber The timber falls down through the roof of Old St. Paul's and the building explodes like a firebomb. It just goes up. That explosion is made much worse because the printers and stationers around Patenostero around Old St. Pauls St Faith's in the basement of St. Paul's in the crypt is their parish church. And they decided quite early on that Nothing would harm St. Paul's. So they put all of their paper, all of their books, all of their pamphlets, they stacked them up for safety in the crypt of St. Paul's And when those timbers fell down into St Paul's and then fell through the floor and into the crrypt All of that paper went up And some Puls just blew up basically What are we talking about in the city? Is it half destroyed? What's the final reckoning Well, the monument says, doesn't it? thirteen thousand two hundred houses, four hundred streets and courts most of the livery halls It's about five sixths of the city of London goes. One Chap writes to his brother in Northumberland and says it is like our feells. because all you could see was kind of brick chimney stacks Everything else is flat It looked like the feells. it didn't look like the city, he said It's incredible the damage and the lasting damage. What we don't know so much is that damage caususe to people the psychological damage. So I mean, for example, For years afterwards, Peps was having nightmares of fire and falling. After the fire Elizabeth, his wife starts to lose her hair and she gets stomach upsets. Fairly clearly, she's got post traumatic stress disorder And I'm sure there are a lot of Londoners will have suffered mentally. The mental health would have been really severely damaged by this What about the rebirth of the city? You mentioned those fells. What were the various competing idedas to recreate London We know of half a dozen or so. lands rebuild London someome more sophisticated than others. I mean, some of the less sophisticated ones involved destrowing a checkerboard and saying make London a checkerboard within Days of the fire Christopher Rn who is Chr Ren isn't an archect this point, Christopher Ren is Wesal Astonomy at Oxford But he's bated with the king and he's in the king's private chambers with a plan redesigning the whole city of London. John Es just after him I'm sure every country gentleman had to go at doing a plan to rebuild London off the ones to swpe Christop Rren is the best far and away the most sophisticated. And yet why did that not get put into action It came close, actually came very close The problem was that the king quite early on gave an undertaking that nobody would lose their homes or their land. As a result of the fire and Ren's Rebuilding would have involved massive compulsory purchase, driving boulevards basically right through the center of the city It would also have taken a very long time Whereas the city authorities would rather just say to everybody, go ahead and build your house, No go ahead and rebuild It never got the sufficient backing from the city authorities. If you want to see Ren's London, not quite the same, but pretty close Go to Washington because a hundred years later Jefferson er Lf when they were laying out the federal city on the banks of the Pomac They took a published version of Ren's plan for London and remade that So you'll see Ren's London in Washington, D.C I love Washington. But I love London too, so maybe it's nice to have both One thing I will say is that I am directionally challenged confessing this now. I'm hopeless. The only two cities I can navigate around are New York because everything's numbered So I can do that. The avenues on the cross streets are numbered and I can still find my way around the city of London because I know London in sixteen sixty six like the back of my hand and it's still there I tell you it is still though in spite of all the changes You can recognize virtually every street and every court and every alley. That's certainly true If you know where Fleet Street is, you're doing all right Obviously there were changes. What regulatory changes were introduced There were several rebuilding acts, which you look at the act and it's all fairly clear that streets have to be thirty feet, forty feet, fifty feet wide, depending on the stace of the street All buildings have to be built of brick or stone or at least have a brick or stone facade These fire prevention measures are put in place quite early on three or four years later after the fire When you actually look at what happened, most people ignored the building regulations. The streets are still twenty feet wide houses are still going up made of timber with thatch. You don't get that miraculous transformation that the old textbooks used to tell you about. It does happen, but it happens over fifty, sixty, seventy years. It's a very slow thing because it's always fascinating to me that London having literally exploded, it then explodes figuratively into the most important city and port on Earth What's the relationship There if any, between this fire and this extraordinary rebirth and rise to becoming probably the richest city on the planet. Well there's two things I think. I mean, one is that it was the most important city in England before the fire One of the reasons for the city authorities pressing ahead with a pieceemeal rebuild is that they're scared, people won't come back. You know, already places like Bristol becoming important cour in the aftermath of the fire, one of the first buildings they put back up is a customs house because they want to start getting in revenues from London as a port So it's important beforehand, I think. The rebuilding is a piecemeal affair. I mean now We look and we can see the important. I use that term very loosely, but I also use that term heartfelt in that I think St. Paul's cathedral, be built by Christopher Ren is the greatest building in the world I make no bones about that. So you've got Ren St. Paul', you've got the city church, fifty six city churches, you've got the rebuilding of de lilivery company holes. those important and they add an enormous status to London. But of course, I mean, St. Paul's takes fifty years to rebuild. No know, it's not the Milver Light The city churches are still being rebuilt thirty, forty, fifty years later What intrigues me is the houses. You imagine a world where Your home is your business where you rent it, you don't own it and it burns down So you've got nowhere to live But no means of making a living