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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. In the early hours of the 2nd of September, 1666, a small fire broke out in a little bakery in Pudding Lane, London.
Within five days, that fire had destroyed the vast majority of one of the largest cities in Europe, if not the world. It was a catastrophe, the Great Fire of London. Exactly what happened that week in 1666? Well, here to tell you all about it is Adrian Tinniswood.
He's a historian, he's a teacher, he's a writer, he's a consultant for National Trust over here in the UK, and he's written a book called By Permission of Heaven, The Story of the Great Fire of London, and we're going to get into it.
We're going to find out why it happened, how it happened, just how bad the damage was, and what it meant for London, which was, fascinatingly, on the threshold of becoming pretty much the biggest and richest city on Earth.
So it comes at a remarkable time in London's story, and it's rather impressive that the city goes from being obliterated to a position of global hegemony in the space of a generation. This is a classic episode of Dan Snow's History Hit. We're re-sharing with you because I've got some exciting news I want to tell you about. History Hit has teamed up with Voice Maps.
These are so clever, these folks. An audio tour app where you can explore the places around the world where history happened at your own pace, with leading historians and guides in your headphones, in your ears, with you on the walk. By the way, actually, it even works offline. And so this guy, me, the one who's talking right now, is going to guide you around the streets of London.
I've released a guide so you can go to the places where the fire ripped through the old city. So once you've listened to this stellar episode, plan your trip to London this summer and take my tour. All you need to do after booking your flight, train, bus, cycle, whatever it is, is install the Voice Map app from the App Store or Google Play today. or go to voicemap.me slash historyhit.
That's voicemap.me forward slash historyhit to check out tours from your favourite History Hit hosts. It's not just me, folks, there are other ones too. But for now, to get a little taste of this extraordinary story, here's our classic episode with Adrian Tinniswood. Enjoy. Enjoy. Adrian, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's great to be with you, Dan. You know what?
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Chapter 2: What triggered the Great Fire of London?
Those kind of dissenting ministers really came into their own then. They were the welfare system that looked after the plague victims.
Tell me about the streets of London, even without plague festering in its crowded streets. What did London look like in the mid-1660s, and how big was it?
Yeah, it was small, and that's the thing. The city of London itself, what we call the Square Mile, was home to about 80,000 people. what we will think of as Greater London, the suburbs and some of the outlying areas, all together had a population of maybe 250,000, 300,000. It's hard to be precise, of course. That's about the same size as Coventry today.
but packed in, unlike Coventry today. I mean, you're living cheap by chow.
Most of the street's very narrow. You're living in mainly timber-framed, laugh-and-plaster houses. Typically, they're jettied out across streets so that on some of the narrower thoroughfares, you could lean out of your bedroom window and shake hands with your neighbour across the road. The sky is blotted out by these houses.
And does that mean that fires are your sort of particular threat in these cities? I mean, there was a huge fire, isn't it? The Forgotten Fire of London in the 13th century, I think it is, when a huge chunk of the city was burned. There were fires all the time, Dan.
If you think, we're looking at a world that was lit by fire. People were always airing their clothes by putting them in front of an open fire. They were looking for a chamber pot with a lighted candle under the bed. And fires took place all the time in London, all the time.
Was it a disaster waiting to happen?
Yeah, but, well, I say yes. I mean, in retrospect, yes, of course it was. At the time, it was an accident. It was a confluence. It was a meeting of three or four different events that any one of them wouldn't have done the harm they did. The August 1666 was hot, it was dry. There'd been a drought all summer, so the buildings were tinned to dry.
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Chapter 3: How did the fire spread so rapidly through the city?
And that night, it grew in strength as it moved up through Kent and it toppled chimneys and it lifted thatch. And it hit London at about one o'clock on the morning of the 2nd of September. And just as it hit London, a baker called Thomas Farriner forgot to put his oven out in Pudding Lane.
If those two things hadn't happened, if Farriner hadn't forgot to put his oven out, if that gale hadn't hit, there would be no Fire of London.
That is a beautiful description of what happened. But let me just, before we go on here, Adrian, you never need to apologise to me to give descriptions of what's happening in maritime history. Let's be very clear about that. Long-time listeners of this show will know that 17th century naval history is something that we could talk about all day.
Before we talk about Thomas Farriner and the fire, you mentioned it hadn't rained all summer, there was a drought. I'm very interested in the fact that, I was reading Geoffrey Parker's magnificent, gigantic book about the 17th century climate catastrophe story. across the planet.
And he points out that many other fires, there was a great fire in what is now Tokyo that is thought to have killed 100,000 people in 1657, I think it was. So there's a climate change story. There's a climate breakdown story here as well.
Yeah, I mean, and there were big fires, not only in London, you mentioned, but there were big fires all over England. I mean, Dorchester burned down in the early 17th century, if I remember right. Northampton burned down in the 1670s, I think. To go back to what I was saying earlier, it was a world lit by fire, and that meant that fires broke out all the time.
Most of the time, they weren't that serious, but occasionally were. And there may be a climate story, a climate change story to talk about here, but I'm not sure that... We can associate climate change with the fact that you've got an entire society that depends on open flame. You know, accidents happen.
So Thomas Farriner, he's a baker. Embers just popped out of his oven today and ignited what was nearby.
Well, he always saw it wasn't his fault. But if I had just accidentally burned down the second largest city in Christendom, I'd probably say it wasn't my fault either.
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