The Great Fire of London occurred from Sunday 2 September to Wednesday 5 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the wall to the west. The death toll is generally thought to have been relatively small, although some historians have challenged this belief.
Fire hazards in the city
The city was essentially medieval in its street plan, an overcrowded warren of narrow, winding, cobbled alleys. It had experienced several major fires before 1666, the most recent in 1633. Building with wood and roofing with thatch had been prohibited for centuries, but these cheap materials continued to be used. The only major area built with brick or stone was the wealthy centre of the city, where the mansions of the merchants and brokers stood on spacious plots, surrounded by an inner ring of overcrowded poorer parishes, in which all available building space was used to accommodate the rapidly growing population.
The human habitations were crowded, and their design increased the fire risk. The typical multi-storey timbered London tenement houses had "jetties" (projecting upper floors). They had a narrow footprint at ground level, but maximised their use of land by "encroaching" on the street with the gradually increasing size of their upper storeys. The fire hazard was well perceived when the top jetties all but met across the narrow alleys—"as it does facilitate a conflagration, so does it also hinder the remedy", wrote one observer. In 1661, Charles II issued a proclamation forbidding overhanging windows and jetties, but this was largely ignored by the local government. Charles's next, sharper message in 1665 warned of the risk of fire from the narrowness of the streets and authorised both imprisonment of recalcitrant builders and demolition of dangerous buildings. It too had little impact.
Sunday
A short time after midnight on Sunday, 2 September 1666, a fire broke out at Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane. The occupants, save the family's maidservant, who was too frightened to try, fled through an upstairs window to the house next door. When the house burned down, she became the fire's first victim. Farriner's neighbours tried to douse the fire; after an hour, the parish constables arrived and judged that the adjoining houses should be demolished to prevent further spread. The householders protested, and Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth was summoned to give his permission.
When Bloodworth arrived, the flames were consuming the adjoining houses and creeping towards the warehouses and flammable stores on the riverfront. The more experienced firemen were calling for demolition, but Bloodworth refused on the grounds that most premises were rented and the owners could not be found. Bloodworth is generally thought to have been appointed to the office of Lord Mayor as a yes man, rather than because he possessed the requisite capabilities for the job. He panicked when faced with a sudden emergency, and, when pressed, made the oft-quoted remark, "A woman might piss it out", and left.
Rebuilding
A special Fire Court was set up from February 1667 to December 1668, and again from 1670 to February 1676. The aim of the court, which was authorised by the Fire of London Disputes Act 1666 and the Rebuilding of London Act 1670, was to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. Cases were heard and a verdict usually given within a day; without the Fire Court, lengthy legal proceedings would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was necessary if London was to recover.
Radical rebuilding schemes poured in for the gutted City and were encouraged by Charles. Apart from Wren and Evelyn, it is known that Robert Hooke, Valentine Knight, and Richard Newcourt proposed rebuilding plans. All were based on a grid system, which became prevalent in the American urban landscape. If it had been rebuilt under some of these plans, London may have rivalled Paris in Baroque magnificence. According to archaeologist John Schofield, Wren's plan "would have probably encouraged the crystallisation of the social classes into separate areas", similar to Haussmann's renovation of Paris in the mid-1800s. Wren's plan was particularly challenging to implement because of the need to redefine property titles.