GREAT FIRE FORETOLD

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 109, 18 February 1935, Page 7

GREAT FIRE FORETOLD

plan to cure smoke evil. A scheme to conquer the smoke evil jjy planting vast aromatic plantations in the heart of London, and to abolish old wooden shops and oil stores from the “danger zone” of the city’s narrow streets, was suggested 300 years ago. The father of the present-day foes of smoke was John Evelyn, the diarist, This quaint plan was to lay out immense plantations of jessamine, sweetbriar, woodbine and lavender in the neighbourhood! of the Palace of Whitehall.

The imaginative scheme went up in smoke, but Evelyn’s warning of the danger of the crowded wooden wharves and oil magazines on Thames-side proved too true. The diarist’s scheme was published in the form of a pamphlet dedicated to King Charles 11. It opened:— “Famifugium, or the inconvenience of the aer and smoak .of London, dissipated together with some remedies humbly proposed. “It was one day as I was walking in your Majesty’s palace at Whitehall when I have sometimes the honour to refresh myself with the sight of your illustrious presence which is the joy of your people’s hearts, that a presumptuous smoak, issuing from one of two tunnels near Northumberland House and not far from Scotland Yard, did so invade the court that all the rooms, galleries and places about it were billed 1 and infetted' with it; and that to such a degree as men could hardly discern one another from the clowd and none could support without manifest inconveniency ... I prepare in this short discourse an expedient how this pernicious nuisance may be reformed, and offer at the present inconveniency, but that removed, to render not only your Majesty’s palace but the whole, city likewise, one of the most delicious habitations in the world, and this with little or no expense, but by improving those plantations which your Majesty so laudibly affects in the moyst depressed and marshy grounds about the towne and the culture and production .of such things as upon every gentle emission through the aer should se perfume the adjacent places with their breath as if by a certain charm or innocent magick they were transferred to that part of Arabia.” On September 4, 1666, the third day of the Great Fire, Evelyn wrote that his “inyestive giving warning what might probably be the issue of suffering those shops to be in the city was looked on as a prophecy.”