The Great Fire of London
According to the Diaries of Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys is probably the most famous of 17th century diarists and his diaries give us a real insight to events of the time and the way that people saw them.

Here are extracts from his description of the Great Fire of London which began in September 1666.

2nd September 1666: Some our our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today. Jane called us up, about 3 in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose...and went to her window, and thought it to be on the back side of Markelane at the furthest; but being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off, and so went to bed again.

Pepys went to sleep and got up at 7am.

By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down tonight by the fire we saw and that it was now burning down all Fishstreet by London Bridge. So...[I] walked to the Tower and there got up upon one of the high places...and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire... So down...to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the King's bakers house in Pudding Lane, and that it hath burned down St Magnes Church and most part of Fishstreet already... Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off. Poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats or clambering from one pair of stair by the waterside to another.

Having stayed, and in an hour's time seen the fire rage every which way, and nobody to my sight endeavouring to quench it, but to remove their goods and leave all to the fire... and the wind mighty high and driving it into the city, and everything, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches

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