It was late. Thomas Farriner, a baker to King Charles II, thought he’d damped down the ovens in his Pudding Lane shop. He was wrong. That tiny mistake on a Saturday night in September 1666 basically changed the face of London forever. People often think of it as this massive, cinematic explosion of flame, but it started with a few smoldering embers in a pile of kindling.
The heat grew.
By 1:00 AM on Sunday, September 2, the house was a chimney. Farriner, his daughter, and a servant ended up scrambling out of an upstairs window and crawling across the rooftops of neighboring houses to escape. Their maid wasn't so lucky. She was too scared to make the jump and became the fire's first victim.
The Pudding Lane Spark: How Did The Great Fire of London Start?
Most school kids know the name Pudding Lane. It sounds cute, almost like something out of a fairy tale. But back then, it was a cramped, filthy alleyway near the Thames. To understand how did the Great Fire of London start, you have to look at the "perfect storm" of conditions that existed that week.
London was a tinderbox.
The summer of 1666 had been brutally hot and dry. A "long drought" had sucked every bit of moisture out of the timber-framed houses that made up the city's heart. These weren't brick buildings like we see today. They were made of wood, covered in highly flammable pitch (tar) to keep out the rain. Then there was the wind. A fierce "strong easterly" gale was blowing that night, acting like a giant bellows, pushing the heat from the bakery toward the warehouses on the riverfront.
Those warehouses were filled with everything you'd need to fuel a literal hellscape: oil, tallow, spirits, hemp, and coal. Once the fire jumped from the bakery to the Star Inn and then down to the wharves, there was no stopping it.
Honestly, the initial response was a total disaster. Thomas Bloodworth, the Lord Mayor of London, was woken up to see the fire early Sunday morning. His reaction is legendary for all the wrong reasons. He reportedly looked at the flames and muttered that a "woman might piss it out" before going back to sleep. He didn't want to authorize the pulling down of houses to create firebreaks because he was worried about the cost of rebuilding them.
That indecision cost the city 13,000 houses.
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The Role of Thomas Farriner’s Bakery
Farriner always denied it. Even later, when he was questioned by a parliamentary committee, he insisted his ovens were cold. He swore he had checked them at midnight. But the physical evidence—and the fact that the fire literally emerged from his shop—tells a different story.
It wasn't a malicious act. It was just a tired baker being human.
The fire didn't just stay on Pudding Lane, though. It moved. It breathed. Because the streets were so narrow, the upper floors of houses (called jetties) almost touched each other across the road. The fire could simply reach across the street and grab the next house.
Why the Fire Spread So Fast
It wasn't just the wood.
The wind was the real villain. It pushed the fire west, away from the Tower of London (thankfully) and toward the wealthy heart of the city. You've got to remember that firefighting in the 17th century was incredibly primitive. There were no fire engines or high-pressure hoses. They used leather buckets and "fire squirts" which were basically giant hand-held syringes that held about a gallon of water.
Imagine trying to put out a forest fire with a Super Soaker.
The only real way to stop a fire back then was to create a "firebreak." This meant blowing up perfectly good houses with gunpowder or pulling them down with massive "fire hooks" so the flames had nothing left to eat. Because the Lord Mayor hesitated, the fire gained a momentum that made firebreaks almost useless for the first 48 hours.
By Monday, the fire was so intense it was creating its own weather.
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Eyewitnesses, including the famous diarist Samuel Pepys, described a "sky like a glowing oven." Pepys is actually our best source for what happened. He was a high-ranking naval official who lived nearby. When he realized the scale of the danger, he didn't just grab his valuables; he dug a hole in his garden and buried his wine and a "parmesan cheese" to keep them safe.
Priority, right?
The Scapegoats and the French Connection
People were terrified. They were also looking for someone to blame. Since England was at war with the Dutch and the French at the time, rumors immediately started flying that the fire was an act of terrorism.
People started lynching foreigners in the streets.
There’s a tragic story of a French watchmaker named Robert Hubert. He was a bit "unbalanced," as they said back then. He actually confessed to starting the fire as an agent of the Pope. Even though it was proven later that he didn't even arrive in London until two days after the fire started, they hanged him anyway. The city needed a villain, and a confused Frenchman was an easy target.
What We Often Get Wrong About the Aftermath
There’s this common myth that the Great Fire was a "blessing in disguise" because it killed off the rats and ended the Great Plague of 1665.
It’s mostly nonsense.
The plague was already dying out by 1666. While the fire did burn down some of the worst slum areas where the plague-carrying rats lived, it mostly destroyed the commercial heart of the city, not the outer suburbs where the plague was still lingering. Plus, the human cost was massive. While the official death toll was recorded as being very low (only six people), modern historians think that’s a total lie.
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Poorer people weren't recorded. And let’s be real: the fire was hot enough to melt lead and turn the stones of St. Paul’s Cathedral into powder. If you were trapped in a cellar, there wouldn't be enough of you left to count in a 17th-century census.
The Reconstruction of a New London
When the fire finally died down on Thursday—partly because the wind dropped and partly because the Duke of York (the King’s brother) took over and started aggressively using gunpowder—the city was a smoking wasteland.
London looked like the moon.
Christopher Wren, the famous architect, saw an opportunity. He wanted to rebuild London with wide boulevards and grand plazas, sort of like Paris. But the merchants who owned the land said "no thanks." They wanted their shops back exactly where they were.
So, London was rebuilt on the same old, messy medieval street plan. The big difference? The new laws. The Rebuilding Act of 1667 dictated that all new houses had to be built of brick or stone. No more timber jetties hanging over the streets. This is why London looks the way it does today.
Actionable Insights for History Enthusiasts
If you're looking to explore this history on the ground, London still holds the scars and the markers of that week in 1666. You don't just have to read about it; you can see where the sparks flew.
- Visit The Monument: Standing at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, this 202-foot tall column is exactly 202 feet away from the site of Farriner's bakery on Pudding Lane. If you climb the 311 steps, you get a clear view of the area the fire consumed.
- Check the Golden Boy of Pye Corner: While the Monument marks where the fire started, this small gilded statue in Smithfield marks where the fire finally stopped. It was a common belief at the time that the fire was a punishment from God for the sin of gluttony, because it started in Pudding Lane and ended at Pye Corner.
- The Museum of London Docklands: Since the main Museum of London is currently undergoing a massive move, their digital archives and the Docklands site offer the best look at 17th-century river life and the types of flammable materials that fueled the blaze.
- St. Paul's Cathedral: Look at the floor. Christopher Wren’s masterpiece was built on the ruins of the old Gothic cathedral that exploded during the fire. He famously found a piece of gravestone in the rubble that said "Resurgam" (I shall rise again) and made it the motto for the new building.
Understanding how did the Great Fire of London start isn't just about a baker's oven. It's a lesson in urban planning, disaster management, and the way humans react under extreme pressure. It shows how one small mistake, combined with bad weather and worse leadership, can dismantle a world power in less than a week. The fire didn't just burn buildings; it burned the old way of doing things, forcing a medieval city to finally step into the modern age.