The Great Fire of London

BBC Learning EnglishLondon LifeThe Great Fire of LondonCallum: Hello, I'm Callum Robertson and this is LondonLife. I'm not in the comfort ofthe studio today, as you might be able to hear, I'm out andabout in London. To be exact I'm in a street called PuddingLane.
　　And it was here in this street that 440 years ago, inSeptember 1666, the GreatFire of London began.
　　To tell us a bit more about the fire and this particularlocation, I've been joined by James Clare who is theHistoric Buildings Architect for the City of London. James,440 years ago at the time of the Great Fire, what wasLondon like?
　　James: London was a very large medieval city, one of themajor cities in Europe and it was full of timber buildingswhich were a great fire hazard. The streets were verynarrow, there were courtyards which were very cramped 1, thehouses were sub-divided and multi-occupied by people,families and people.
　　Callum: The houses being made of wood and the streets beingvery narrow, there was a real danger of fire throughoutLondon. And we're here in Pudding Lane where the firestarted. What do we know of how it started?
　　James: It started in the premises 2 of a baker 3 and itstarted very early in the morning and so it could have beenan accident from his domestic fireplaces or a candle or anoil lamp or it could have been his ovens for baking whichmaybe overheated.
　　But certainly there was a fire there and it started fairlyslowly but once it caught hold, it was very rapid inspreading to adjacent premises.
　　Callum: And I suppose because the streets were so narrowand the buildings were made of wood it was really adisaster waiting to happen.
　　James: Absolutely. There were fires every so often butnone were as great as this.
　　Compared to earlier fires it took hold and it was fanned bya very strong wind from the east which pushed the fireacross the city towards the west and there was very little,if anything, that people could do to fight the fire at thattime although efforts were made to.
　　Callum: And how long did the fire last?
　　James: It lasted between four and five days although itcontinued to smoulder, the debris 4 continued to smoulder formany days after that.
　　Callum: How did the fire finally come to an end? Did itburn itself out?
　　James: It certainly had burnt so much of the city thatthere was relatively 5 little left to burn. However the fire-breaks did help, the demolition 6 of buildings, indeedblowing some buildings up. But the most significant factorwas that the wind dropped and this allowed the peopletrying to fight the fire to finally overcome it.
　　Callum: What were the effects of the fire?
　　James: There were enormous numbers of homeless people. Thewealthy had been able to move out to the countryside oroccupy institutional buildings but the mainpopulation had had to flee to open fields such as Moorgateand camp under canvas if they were lucky.
　　Callum: What was the extent of the destruction of the Cityof London?
　　James: St Paul's Cathedral went on fire, the old St.
　　Paul's Cathedral. There were some13 or 14 thousand houses burnt out. 87 churches weredestroyed and very many businesses.
　　Callum: Was there any good news to come out of thedestruction of the City of London at that time?
　　James: Well, I guess the good news was they were able torecover in a remarkably 7 quick period of time.
　　Callum: It still seems to be a rather higgledy-piggledyarrangement of narrow streets.
　　You would have thought that they might have used this as anopportunity to lay the city out in a more modern way withcity blocks and so on.
　　James: There were great ambitions on the part of both theCity and more importantly the Crown and government toradically change the design of the city along modern designprinciples as had been developed in Europe. This involvedbroad avenues with beautiful buildings lining 8 the avenues.
　　But the reality wasthat there were hundreds and thousands of owners of the oldbuildings and they wanted to rebuild their properties asquickly as possible and it was an impossible task for thecity authorities to simply take over all that land andimpose a new street layout. Although they did manage towiden a modest number of strategic streets, such asCheapside.
　　Callum: So in a sense London became a modern city with amediaeval layout?
　　James: Yes that's right. If you walk the City today it'sstill very much the mediaevalstreet pattern and that's one of the features of the cityof London which distinguishes it from other cities. It hasthat character.
　　Callum: James Clare, thank you very much.
　　James: Thank you very much Callum.
　　Callum: Well that's all from this special edition of LondonLife from Pudding Lane.