The Great London Fire - Episode 1

Good morning, soon July will be gone and then August will take its place.  For August I will be doing my recommendation lists for teachers to help them prepare for the school year.  Then in September, I will be back to blogging five days a week until next May.  The plan for the rest of the year will be a variety of documentaries for September, then October 31 Days of the Time Team, then World War I and World War II for November, and concluding with Fun and Frivolous and Year in Review for December.  I find myself trying to find a balance between what gets newly posted on Timeline or Absolute History and looking through older documentaries.

It is 1666 and central London is on fire.  The Great Fire was the biggest in London’s history.  It destroyed 87 churches and over 13,000 houses and caused billions of pounds in damage.  Dan Jones, Suzannah Lipscomb, and Rob Bell trace the story of the great fire through three people.  The three people are Sybil – a shoemaker, Joshua – a bookseller, and Robert – a banker.  Each of these people would be transformed by the Great Fire.  The run time for the first episode is 44:20.

Dan Jones kicks off the series by going to the place where the fire started: Pudding Lane.  The Great Fire of London started as the result of a hot and dry summer.  Everyone was going about their business.  It would have been a typical Saturday afternoon until a baker started a fire that would consume the city.  Thomas was the bakery owner.  Dan talks about how he was a tricky character and would end up the villain of the story.  The Fire was thought to have been started on Pudding Lane, however, one historian found the exact location of the fire.  The ovens were found on a street over Monument Lane.  The bakery would have been a large complex.

The fire began Sunday Night.  The evening was rather quiet and the baker’s family would have turned in for bed.  The baker’s family insisted that the fire was out when they went to bed.  However, it was clear that an ember was slowly burning a pile of twigs.  The fire was later discovered by the baker’s son and he rose the alarm.  The only way for the family to escape was on the roof.  The family shouted for help.  Unfortunately, the fire was starting to spread to nearby houses. 

Bell tries to look for why the fire spread and he discovers that it was in the architecture of the building.  He turns to the Weald and Downland Museum.  The top floors would have been jettied out, meaning the top floors were extended over the floors below.  The first floor would have had enough space for a cart and the upper floors meant that you could have shaken hands with your neighbor.  This would have allowed more floor space on upper levels; however, the houses would have been packed tightly together.  This would have spread rapidly.  Additionally, many of the walls would have been used with waddle and dob.  Bell takes wall samples to a fire lap to try to show what would have happened to the walls during the fire.  The results are surprising to Bell.  This does not answer the question as to why the buildings caught fire so quickly.  Another test is called for and this time the walls are damaged and the fire begins immediately.  The houses on Pudding Lane at the time would have been considered in poor repair.

The baker would have made his way to church to sound the alarm.  The church bells would have been the loudest thing people would have heard.  Church bells at two in the morning would have been highly unusual.  People would have known that there would have been something going on with that early alarm.  However, would the people have any idea what was coming for them?  Tune into the rest of the episode to find out!

This was a very interesting first episode of the series.  The experiment with the waddle and dob-building technique was very cool to see.  This would be a good episode for research purposes as well as something you can mine for clips.  The interactions between Dan, Suzannah, and Rob were nice to see.  So far this series is off to a good start because you can easily follow along with the progress of the Great Fire.