The fire began before dawn in the shop of baker Thomas Farriner on Pudding Lane and, driven by strong winds and fed by densely packed timber buildings, quickly overwhelmed the city's rudimentary firefighting capacity. Over four days it destroyed roughly 80% of the City of London, including St. Paul's Cathedral and 87 parish churches, though remarkably few lives were officially recorded lost. The disaster reshaped London, leading to new building codes requiring brick and stone construction.
Diarist Samuel Pepys buried his prized Parmesan cheese and wine in his garden to save them from the flames, then rowed out onto the Thames to watch the city burn from a safer distance, recording the scene in vivid, unforgettable prose: pigeons too stubborn to leave their nests, singed and falling from the sky.
Lord Mayor Thomas Bloodworth's fateful dismissal of the initial blaze—reportedly saying 'a woman might piss it out'—allowed the fire crucial hours to spread before authorities began demolishing houses to create firebreaks. The rebuilding that followed, though it never fully realized Christopher Wren's ambitious redesign for the city, produced the brick-and-stone London of St. Paul's Cathedral's current dome and set enduring precedents for urban fire safety.
Key people: Thomas Farriner, Samuel Pepys