Pudding Lane was (and still is) located in the centre of the City of London, the medieval city of around one square mile ringed by ancient Roman walls and gates and rivers now covered and forgotten.

The fire started in the early hours of the morning of September 2 on Pudding Lane in the bakery of Thomas Farriner. The Londoners felt that “It can’t have been an accident, it can’t be God visiting this upon us, especially after the plague, this has to be an act of war.”Īs far as we know, it wasn’t. “The need to blame somebody was very, very strong,” attests Adrian Tinniswood, author of By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire. Another Frenchman was nearly dismembered by a mob that thought that he was carrying a chest of bombs the bombs were tennis balls. A French woman’s breasts were cut off by Londoners who thought the chicks she carried in her apron were incendiaries. A blacksmith “felled” a Frenchman in the street with a vicious blow with an iron bar a witness recalled seeing his “innocent blood flowing in a plentiful stream down his ankles”. A Swedish diplomat was nearly hung, saved only by the Duke of York who happened to see him and demand he be let down. Or maybe it was the Catholics, who’d long plotted the downfall of the Protestant nation.īefore the flames were out, a Dutch baker was dragged from his bakery while an angry mob tore it apart. The fire was a “softening” of the city ahead of an invasion, or they were already here, whoever “they” were. England was at war with both the Dutch and the French, after all. The rumors spread faster than the blaze that engulfed London over five days in September 1666: that the fire raging through the city’s dense heart was no accident – it was deliberate arson, an act of terror, the start of a battle.

Oil painting of the Great Fire, seen from Newgate.

Rome total war heaven