The consuming appetite for fire among the citizens did not diminish until the “blitz” of 1940. On the night of 29 December, the raid timed when the water of the Thames was at its lowest, some 1,500 fires were burning at the same time in the city. It was said then that the “Great Fire” had truly come again.
The month of August had been unusually hot, “characterised by an extraordinary drought,” so that the thatch and timber of the neighbouring buildings in the narrow streets and alleys were already “half-burned.” The fire found friendly territory, in other words, and was further aided by a strong south-east wind; it was carried onward from Pudding Lane towards Fish Street and London Bridge, then down through Thames Street into Old Swan Lane, St. Lawrence Lane, and Dowgate. Everyone in a position to do so took to the water with boats, lighters and skiffs carrying the goods of their houses threatened by the flames. Pepys also took to the river, where with his face in the wind he was “almost burned with a shower of fire drops.” He observed that most households took with them a pair of virginals. He also noticed that the “poor pigeons were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies till they burned their wings and fell down.”
The fire was now out of control, burning steadily to the north and to the west; Pepys eventually took refuge from the incendiary river in an alehouse on the other bank, and there “saw the fire grow … in corners, and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious bloody flame, not like the fire flame of an ordinary fire.” It was then that he noticed the arch or bow of flame, about a mile in width (which Pope-Hennessy was to observe during the fire-raids of 1940).
That night the fire spread from Cheapside down to the Thames, along Cornhill, Tower Street, Fenchurch Street, Gracechurch Street and to Baynard’s Castle. It had gone so far down Cheapside that it took hold of St. Paul’s which, by chance, was surrounded by wooden scaffolding. John Evelyn, who walked among the streets even at this hour, noted that “the noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at last one was not able to approach it.”
The unprepared citizens were left bewildered; they made no attempt to put out the fires, and simply fled. Those who remained, of the “lower” sort, stole whatever they could take from the burning dwellings. Those who did not take refuge upon the river, itself now choked with smoke and deluged by “fire drops,” went into the surrounding fields of Islington, Finsbury and Highgate, watched and wept.
By the following day, Monday, the fire had spread down Ludgate into Fleet Street and had burned down the Old Bailey; Newgate and Billingsgate were gone, while the molten lead from the roof of St. Paul’s ran through the streets “glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse or man was able to tread on them.” By now the smoke stretched for fifty miles, so that those leaving the city could travel for hours in its shadow.
That night several fires met together. One came down Cornhill, and one down Threadneedle Street; which, uniting together, in turn met two separate fires coming from Walbrook and Bucklersbury. John Evelyn remarked that “all these four, journeying together, break into one great flame at the corner of Cheapside, with such a dazzling light and burning heat, and roaring noise by the fall of so many houses together, that was very amazing.” It was as if some ancient spirit of fire had reared its head in the very middle of the city.
