To this satirical note let us add a glance at the suburbs with the help of Hollar’s map of 1665. In this map Lambeth is evidently a small village lying south of the church and Palace, with at least one street running along the road on the east leading across to St. George’s Fields. On the north there are no houses; the Palace Gardens stretch out behind the Embankment, covered with trees; then comes the Lambeth Marsh, a broad field bare of trees; there is a broad mile where the river bends, and here, buried among the trees, houses begin, and continue along Bankside; on the east of Lambeth Marsh is St. George’s Fields, with houses on the north side, and St. George’s Church. According to Hollar, South London at this time must have been a charming and rural place divided into gardens and set with trees. Unfortunately his picture becomes unintelligible when we find St. Mary Overies on the other side of the river.
CHAPTER IV
II. THE FIRE OF LONDON
If, as some hold, the cause of the long-continued Plague, which lasted, with intervals of rest, from the middle of the sixteenth century to 1665, was nothing but the accumulated filth of London, so that the ground on which it stood was saturated many feet in depth with poisonous filtrations, the Fire of 1666 must be regarded in the light of a surgical operation absolutely essential if life was to be preserved, and as an operation highly successful in its results. For it burned, more or less, every house and every building over an area of 436 acres out of those which made up London within the walls.
It began in the dead of night—Sunday morning, 3 A.M., September 2, 1666—at the shop of one Farryner, a baker, in Pudding Lane, one of those narrow lanes which run to north and south of Thames Street. All the houses in that lane were of wood, pitched throughout, and as the stories jutted out, the houses almost met at the top. The house itself was full of brush and faggot wood, so that the Fire quickly grew to a head, and then began to spread out in all directions at once, but especially to the west and north. Close to the house was an inn called the “Star,” the courtyard of which was full of hay and straw. In a very short time Pudding Lane itself was completely destroyed; it would seem as if the people were distracted and attempted little or nothing except their own escape. When day broke the fire had caught Thames Street, which was full of warehouses containing everything combustible, as butter, cheese, brandy, wine, oil, sugar, hemp, flax, tar, pitch, rosin, brimstone, cordage, hops, wood, and coal. The only means of combating a fire fed by such materials was to blow up the houses, and this the people vehemently opposed at first. As for the supply of water, there was none at all adequate to the situation, and the water machines of London Bridge were quickly destroyed with the houses on the Bridge. In order to escape and to carry away their property, every available vehicle, cart, waggon, carriage, or boat, was in requisition. Forty pounds was offered and given by many householders for the safe removal of their property, while in some cases—those of the wealthy—£400 was paid simply to get the plate and jewels and other valuables carried out of the reach of the Fire. The things were taken out into the open fields, where they were laid on the grass, and so left in charge of the owners; open and unconcealed robberies took place, as was to be expected. Some of the people placed their things for safety in the churches, fondly thinking that the fire would spare them; the booksellers of Little Britain and Paternoster Row deposited the whole of their books in the crypt of St. Paul’s; alas! they lost them all. Those who had friends in the villages near London carried away their money and their valuables and deposited them in the houses of these friends. Pepys buried his treasure in the garden of Sir W. Ryder at Bethnal Green. He afterwards describes how he dug it up again and how he lost some of the money by the decay of the bags.
THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON
From a contemporary print. E. Gardner’s Collection.
A strong easterly wind carried the flames along from roof to roof, and from house to house, and from street to street. The fire raged almost unchecked. By Monday morning it had covered the area between Pudding Lane and Gracechurch Street and Lombard Street, and to St. Swithin’s in Candlewick Street, along the river as far as the Three Cranes in the Vintry. By Tuesday night it had destroyed everything as far west as St. Dunstan’s in Fleet Street. By this time the men arrived from the dockyards, and by blowing up houses the fire was stopped at a great many points at once; the Duke of York superintended the work, and gained all hearts by his powerful labours in handing the buckets and giving orders. On Wednesday the fire broke out again in the Temple, but was reduced without difficulty. The damage done by this terrible calamity was computed, to put it into figures, as follows:—of houses destroyed, 13,200; their value, £3,900,000; of streets, 400; of parish churches, 87; their value, £261,600; of consecrated chapels, 6; their value, £12,000; of wares, goods, etc., £3,800,000; of public edifices burned, £939,000; St. Paul’s rebuilt at a cost of £2,000,000. The whole loss, with other and smaller items, was reckoned at £10,730,500. The public buildings destroyed included St. Paul’s Cathedral, eighty-seven parish churches, six consecrated chapels, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, Sion College, the Grey Friars Church, St. Thomas of Acon, the Justice House, the four prisons, fifty companies’ halls, and four gates. By this time many of the former nobles’ town houses and the great merchants’ palaces had been taken down and turned into private houses, warehouses, and shops; as, for instance, the Erber, Cold Harbour, la Riole, the King’s Wardrobe, and others. The mediæval buildings with the exception of the churches had all gone, but there was still left a great quantity of remains, walls, vaults, arches, and other parts of ancient buildings, the loss of which to the antiquary and the historian was irreparable.
This appalling calamity is without parallel in history except, perhaps, the earthquake of Lisbon. Once before there had been a fire which swept London from east to west, but London was then poor; there were few merchants, and the warehouses were small and only half-filled. In 1665 the warehouses were vast and filled with valuable merchandise. There still stands south of Thames Street a warehouse[9] built immediately after the Fire, evidently in imitation of its predecessors. It consists of seven or eight stories, all low; there are still small gables, a reminiscence of the old gables; looking upon this warehouse and remembering that there was a long row of these facing the river with lanes and river stairs between, we can understand the loss to the merchants caused by the conflagration. Considering also the rows of shops along Cheapside, Eastcheap, Ludgate Hill, and Cornhill, we can understand the ruin that fell upon the retail dealers in that awful week. All they had in the world was gone save the right of rebuilding on the former site. The master craftsmen lost their tools and their workshops; the bookseller lost his books; the journeyman lost his employment as well as his sticks. I quote here certain words of my own in another book:—