THIS WEEK'S GREAT DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 208, 3 September 1927, Page 8

THIS WEEK'S GREAT DAY.

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON.

(By cntBT.BS CONWAY.)

Two hundred and sixty-one years ago, onl September 2, 1668, one of the greatest fires in the history of the world broke oat in the ancient city of London, more than three-quarters of which was totally destroyed within the next four days.

At that time the narrow winding streets of Old London were closely packed with houses, built mainly of wood and roofed with pitch and tar, and the upper floors overlapping the lower, while the great wooden signboards, which hung in front of practically every house, and almost touched those projecting from the other side of the street, made a line of communication in case of fire which was scarccly less effective than a train of gunpowder.

The fire started in the early hours of a Sabbath morning, and originated in a baker's shop, the careless owner of which had gone to bed leaving a pile of kindling wood stacked around his oven. The flames, fanned by a strong breeze, spread with great rapidity, and before nightfall over 300 houses had been destroyed, while by the morning of September 4 more than 10,000 buildings had been either consumed or were burning.

On the morning of September 5 the wind dropped, and whole streets of houses in the path of the flames having been pulled down or blown up with gunpowder the further progress of the fire was stopped, but it was many days before the conflagration burned itself out, and the ashes remained hot for several weeks.

Only six lives were lost, but St. Paul's Cathedral, the Guildhall, the Royal Exchange, the whole of the public buildings, 86 churches, 400 streets and 13,200 houses were destroyed, and the property loss was estimated at over twenty million pounds. The fire made a clean sweep of 375 of the city's area of 448 acres, and spread over 64 acres outside the city walls, leaving more than 100,000 people homeless.

Within a few days of the fire Sir Christopher Wren, the most illustrious of British architects, had prepared an admirable plan for the rebuilding of the city, but owing to the narrow-mindedness of the landowners, incessant disputes about the value of property and the reluctance to alter the use of sites, which had long been associated with some particular trade or institution, Wren's suggestions were not adopted, and the opportunity was lost of making the new London one of the handsomest and best designed cities in the world. In many ways the disaster proved a great blessing, for brick and stone were largely used in the rebuilding of the city, and the widening of many streets and improved sanitary methods prevented a recurrence of the terrible plagues and epidemics which had so frequently devastated London in the past.

The fire was maliciously, but without the slightest foundation, attributed to a Roman Catholic plot to destroy the city, and an inscription to that effect originally appeared on the Monument which Wren erected to commemorate the fire, but it was obliterated in 1850. The Monument, a hollow stone column, is 202 feet high, and stands exactly 202 feet from the spot where the fire started in Pudding Lane, and it was originally intended to use it as a vertical telescope, but the height of the column proved insufficient. The popular belief that the fire started at Pudding Lane and ended at Pye Corner is not correct, as the conflagration spread to a considerable distance beyond the latter spot.