by Ian Mortimer
Some people will tell you it takes four days for the fire to burn itself out; others insist it lasts five or six. However, for months afterwards, pockets of material continue to smoulder in basements, flaring up suddenly when the air enters them. Pepys notices smoke coming from cellars all through the winter; the last such occasion being 16 March 1667, more than six months after the start of the fire.19
As soon as the blaze has started to die down, the ruins attract attention. William Taswell, a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, describes making his way to the cathedral on the morning of 6 September, while the fire is still burning:
On Thursday, soon after sunrise, I endeavoured to reach St Paul’s. The ground was so hot as almost to scorch my shoes, and the air so intensely warm that unless I had stopped some time upon Fleet Bridge to rest myself, I must have fainted under the extreme languor of my spirits. After giving myself time to breathe, I made the best of my way to St Paul’s. And now let any person judge of the violent emotion I was in when I perceived the metal belonging to the bells melting; the ruinous condition of its walls; whole heaps of stone of a large circumference tumbling down with a great noise just upon my feet, ready to crush me to death … I forgot to mention that near the east wall of St Paul’s a human body presented itself to me, parched up as it were with the flames: whole as to skin, meagre as to flesh, yellow as to colour. This was an old decrepit woman who had fled here for safety, imagining the flames would not have reached her there. Her clothes were burnt and every limb reduced to coal.20
John Evelyn walks through the city the day after Taswell:
I went this morning on foot from Whitehall as far as London Bridge through the late Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill by St Paul’s, Cheapside, Exchange, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate and out to Moorfields, thence through Cornhill etcetera with extraordinary difficulty, clambering over heaps of yet smoking rubbish, and frequently mistaking where I was: the ground under my feet so hot that it even burnt the soles of my shoes … At my return I was infinitely concerned to find that goodly church St Paul’s now a sad ruin … The lead, iron-work, bells, plate etcetera melted; the exquisitely wrought Mercers’ Chapel, the sumptuous Exchange, the august fabric of Christ Church, all the rest of the Companies’ halls, splendid buildings, arches, entries all in dust; the fountains dried up and ruined while the very waters remained boiling; the voragos [chasms] of subterranean cellars, wells and dungeons, formerly warehouses, still burning in stench and dark clouds of smoke, so that in five or six miles of traversing about I did not see one load of timber unconsumed nor many stones but what were calcined white as snow.
The people who now walked about the ruins appeared like men in some dismal desert, or, rather, in some great city laid waste by a cruel enemy; to which was added the stench that came from some poor creatures’ bodies, beds and other combustible goods … Nor was I yet able to pass through any of the narrow streets but kept [to] the widest: the ground and air, smoke and fiery vapour continued so intense that my hair was almost singed and my feet insufferably surbated [made sore]. The bye-lanes and narrow streets were quite filled up with rubbish; nor could one have possibly known where he was but by the ruins of some church or hall that had some remarkable tower or pinnacle remaining.21
When the fire has died down enough for people to be able to see the full extent of the damage, they find that all the city from the Tower to the Temple Church has been destroyed, from the river all the way up to the northern city wall. Apart from the cathedral, eighty-seven churches and six chapels are in ruins or have fallen completely. The halls of fifty-two livery companies have gone, as has the Royal Exchange, the Customs House and four prisons (many of the inmates escaping during the fire). London Stone lies shattered in fragments, the largest surviving piece being barely two feet long. The devastated area amounts to 436 acres; no fewer than 13,200 houses lie in ashes. Although that amounts to only one-fifth of the city, it is nevertheless the most important part in terms of civic pride and heritage, urban administration and trade. The fire leaves 80,000 people homeless. Yet, surprisingly, almost everyone has found shelter within four days. Whereas on Thursday the 6th and Friday the 7th you will see people who have lost everything camping on the sides of the roads leading to Islington and Highgate, by the Wednesday of the following week they have all vacated the area. Temporary churches and places of business are set up promptly. Property prices and rents rocket, naturally, but people share rooms and houses. Some resort to building small brick shacks on the sites of their former premises, although the onset of winter and the lack of protection soon persuade many to move. Be warned that the old parish watch system no longer operates in the desolation: if you are attacked at night, no constables with torches will come to your aid. When Pepys takes a coach through the ruins after dark, he travels with a drawn sword.22
The Great Rebuilding
The Great Fire is an astonishing spectacle, but the rebuilding of London is even more remarkable. It is much easier to burn down an old wooden city in five days than it is to build a fine new one in five years. Nevertheless, that is what happens. Within two weeks of the fire, John Evelyn and Christopher Wren have each independently drawn up a new layout for the city. Wren’s plan, informed by Inigo Jones’s work at Covent Garden, envisages piazzas adjacent to the principal public buildings, such as the cathedral and the Royal Exchange, and long, wide streets connecting them. Evelyn’s plan similarly incorporates many piazzas but it is more regular, arranged around square and rectangular blocks. However, both plans are set to one side, due to issues arising from ownership of the land. The law of property has proved one of the most enduring and stabilising factors down the centuries: people trust that no one can simply take away their land from them. The last thing they want now is to be forced to give up the site of their home; many of them don’t have any other assets left. Besides, the government cannot afford to buy all the ruins at the market price. There are many other legal questions that complicate the matter. What happens to the people whose income depends on rent paid by their tenants? Many landlords continue to demand payment, even though the Fire has destroyed their houses. What should happen in the interim to the people who urgently need a new place of business, or who are sharing rooms with their kin? They can’t afford to wait until the government has raised enough money to buy their land. For all these reasons, it is highly desirable that the city is rebuilt as quickly as possible, and this means simply going ahead without lengthy legal battles over land acquisition. Thus the original street layout is retained. In the end, only two new roads are created: King Street and Queen Street, crossing the city from the Guildhall to the Thames.
The ruins soon become a hive of activity, as workmen pull down the remains of walls, remove the old burnt timber and cart away stone to be reused elsewhere. Demolition is already complete by the end of November. The livery companies are swift to re-establish themselves; three halls are finished by the end of 1668. The Royal Exchange is rebuilt the following year. As for St Paul’s Cathedral, the king initially vows that it will be restored, despite Wren’s advice that it should be demolished. But in the spring of 1668, while reconstruction is in progress, part of the nave wall collapses, revealing hitherto unsuspected weaknesses in the surviving fabric. At this news, the king reconsiders the building’s future, and in July he asks Wren to draw up a plan for a new cathedral. Funnily enough, Wren already has some ideas up his sleeve. Demolition of the remains of Old St Paul’s starts the following month. The medieval stones are taken down the hill to the Fleet Ditch and used to canalise the river and raise the level of the ground there.
It is at this point that the tradition of controlling the quality of building in London bears new fruit. An Act is passed establishing four different categories of house, all of which must be built in brick or stone, with roofs of tile or slate. The smallest category, two storeys with an attic and a cellar, is intended for alleys and lanes; each storey is required to be 9ft high. The next size up, of three storeys plus an attic, is for streets and pri
ncipal lanes, and roads facing the river; the ground floor and first floor are to be 10ft high, the second floor 9ft. The third type comprises four-storey houses ‘fronting all high streets and lanes of note’, the storeys from the ground up being 10ft, 10½ft, 9ft and 8½ft high.23 All the houses along one street are meant to have the same height of roofline and be contiguous. The fourth category is ‘mansion houses for citizens and other persons of extraordinary quality’. These too are limited to four storeys. Not all the high-quality features of William Newton’s developments in Lincoln’s Inn Fields are adopted; most houses cannot have forecourts behind high walls, and the high construction costs mean that most buildings do not have pilasters and balustrades on the roof. But the Act is effective in permitting the design and construction of affordable high-quality residences. By the end of 1667, 650 have been completed by private developers. The next year sees another 1,450 finished. Eventually, 8,000 are erected on the sites of the original 13,200: there are fewer dwellings because all the back-yard tenements have been eradicated. In addition, streets have been widened and drainage channels built. Wren starts rebuilding the parish churches in 1670: he designs seventeen of them in that year alone, and eventually completes fifty-one. He also designs the new baroque cathedral, which is sufficiently complete for a service to be held there in 1696, although it won’t be finished until 1710. The Monument to the Fire, located near Pudding Lane and designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, is completed in 1676.
While the old city is being rebuilt, the suburbs keep growing. To the east of the Tower, the construction of small houses for workers continues apace: in Shadwell as many as fifty houses are built per acre of ground.24 To the west and north of the city, new houses are built for the wealthy. Henry Jermyn, earl of St Albans, starts building St James’s Square in 1665 and sees his aristocratic town houses take pride of place as the most luxurious in London in the 1670s. Just to the north, on Piccadilly, three massive mansions are built in the 1660s. In 1667 Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington, acquires and completes Burlington House (better known to you as the Royal Academy), designed by the royal surveyor, Sir John Denham. Further west along the same street, Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, is building Clarendon House, designed by Roger Pratt and widely considered the finest residence in London. And further west still, there is the huge Berkeley House, built by Hugh May for Lord Berkeley and completed in 1666. Leicester Square, Soho Square and Golden Square are laid out in the 1670s, as are the streets between them. Devonshire Square dates from 1678. Red Lion Square and Marine Square (later known as Wellclose Square) are two of the many building projects of the 1680s undertaken by the strangely named Nicholas If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barbon (a name thrust upon him by his Puritan father, Praise-God Barebones). Ironically, Barbon’s damnation is something heartily desired by many of his contemporaries, on account of his initial building projects in Mincing Lane, whose houses have such weak foundations that they collapse, and his willingness to demolish properties without the owner’s consent, which leads to litigation. He is not the only unscrupulous developer. In 1682 Sir George Downing builds Downing Street – a development of houses which are structurally so weak that only four of them survive, and those four will require frequent rebuilding over the subsequent centuries. Pity the poor people who have to live there.
To be fair to Barbon, he does build many solidly constructed houses in London as well, such as those along the Strand, in Chancery Lane and Red Lion Square. Even more positively, he pioneers the practice of insuring buildings against fire in the 1670s. In 1680 he relaunches the service as a joint-stock company, ‘The Insurance Office for Houses’. Soon it has a number of competitors, including the Friendly Society for Securing Houses from Loss by Fire (founded in 1683) and the even-more snappily titled ‘Contributors for Insuring Houses, Chambers or Rooms from Loss by Fire, by Amicable Contribution’ (founded in 1696).25 Having paid your deposit and a subscription, you will have a metal plaque attached to the wall of your house to verify that you are insured and that the insurance company’s firemen may attempt to put out any fire that affects your property. Of course, if you haven’t paid your subscription, or don’t display a proper plaque, they will just stand by and watch your house burn.
Fire insurance is something Londoners badly need, for they continue to be somewhat cavalier with the candles. If you miss the Great Fire of London in 1666, you might choose to watch the Theatre Royal burn down in January 1672. The Navy Office buildings in Seething Lane, including Pepys’s own house, catch light in January 1673, taking another thirty houses with them. A fire in Shadwell consumes about a hundred old houses the same year. Then, on Friday, 26 May 1676, the Little Fire of London breaks out in Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames. Like its ‘Great’ predecessor, it starts at night in an old, overcrowded area of narrow alleys and timber-framed houses. By the time it is brought under control – at ten o’clock the following night – it has consumed 624 properties. Private mansions regularly burn down too. Hungerford House (on the site of the modern Charing Cross Station) goes up in smoke in 1669. Goring House does likewise in 1674; this is replaced by Arlington House (which will become the south wing of the modern Buckingham Palace). The grand Montagu House, the Bloomsbury home of the duke of Montagu, designed by Robert Hooke, is sadly reduced to ashes in 1686. Tragically, Bridgewater House is engulfed in flames the following year, with the deaths of two of the earl of Bridgewater’s sons and their tutor.
The two most shocking of all these noble conflagrations are those that engulf the royal palace of Whitehall. In April 1691, a maidservant who cannot be bothered to find a knife to cut a candle from a bundle of them decides to burn one off, and then tosses the first candle aside without thinking. As Evelyn notes in his diary, ‘this night a sudden and terrible fire burnt down all the buildings over the Stone Gallery at Whitehall, to the waterside, beginning at the apartment of the late duchess of Portsmouth, which had been pulled down and rebuilt no less than three times to please her!’ Worse is to come. In January 1698, the remainder of ‘the largest and ugliest palace in Europe’ is destroyed when a Dutch laundress leaves some clothes to dry in front of a charcoal fire and then forgets about them. Only Inigo Jones’s great Banqueting Hall and the gatehouses are saved. Sculptures by Michelangelo and Bernini perish in the flames, as does Holbein’s great portrait of Henry VIII and many other priceless treasures. So too does the laundress responsible.26 The completeness of the destruction enables developers to build more houses and offices on the extensive site of the old palace, with its courtyards, bowling green and gardens.
As a result of all this building and rebuilding, the city can accommodate more and more people and the population continues to grow at an extraordinary rate. Between 1660 and 1700 the number living in the poorer parishes to the east of the city increases by over half, from about 59,000 to 92,000.27 To the west, the fashionable parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields sees even more dramatic growth, from 19,000 in 1660 to 69,000 by 1685.28 Across London as a whole, the population of 410,000 in 1660 rises to about 475,000 by 1670 and to 575,000 by 1700. That is more than Paris (488,000 inhabitants), more than four times the size of Rome (125,000) and nearly ten times the size of Dublin (60,000).29 What’s more, London now accommodates about 11.4 per cent of the population of England (compared to just 5 per cent in 1600). If you add the many commuters and visitors – the farmers from nearby villages bringing their livestock into the city, the tourists coming to view the sights, and people from all over the kingdom coming to town to attend the law courts or transact financial business – the importance of the capital increases still further. At least one-sixth of all English people spend some portion of their lives in the capital.
All this makes London dominant in English affairs, although the full extent of its dominance is not often appreciated. In the years 1670–1700, its population is around 420 per cent of the size of the ten next largest places in England put together. Never before has it been so strikingly o
ut in front. Nor will it ever be so again (in the modern world it is about 163 per cent).30 And this primacy is more than just a question of numbers. For most of this period, only three places in England are permitted to print books – Oxford, Cambridge and London – and of those, London produces by far the majority. It is also where all the newspapers are printed, where Parliament sits, where the stock market is established and where the banks are based. If you want to see the king, you’ll need to come to court, which is based in London. If a wealthy man dies with goods worth £5 in more than one diocese, the chances are that his executor will have to come to London to prove the will. For all these reasons, London attracts people from all over the country. By 1700, London is vital to a significant proportion of the people of Britain.
This dominance and intensity of activity mean that London increasingly acts as a magnifying glass on people’s lives, bringing out their key characteristics. It makes the wealthy wealthier, the poor poorer and the avaricious more greedy. It allows the poetic to dream. It drives the lonely to despair. It encourages the curious to experiment, the gluttonous to eat, inebriates to drink, gamblers to take risks, extroverts to show off and shy people to retreat into themselves. In short, it is a great amplifier of the English spirit, and therefore an excellent place to begin your journey into Restoration Britain. However, although tiredness with London may well equate to tiredness with life (as Dr Johnson will famously say in the next century), it is only a small part of the island of Great Britain.
