Monument

The Monument is open daily 9.30am to 5.30pm. Entry costs around £3 for adults.

020 7626 2717

On the night of 2 September 1666 a small fire broke out in the premises of a bakers shop in Pudding Lane, London.  No-one knows who started it, but rumours abound of the carelessness of a maid. If this was true it was carelessness that had the most enormous and disastrous consequences imaginable. London’s streets were all closely packed, very tight, very little room in between buildings. Soon the bakers shop was an inferno. There was a East wind which fanned the flames and they spread with terrifying speed to other buildings. Houses and buildings were usually sealed with tar and pitch which simply aggravated the situation and helped to spread the fire. For four terrible days the wind created havoc and then mercifully stopped.

Secretary of the Admiralty, Samuel Pepys, watched the inferno from a safe position across the Thames and described it as a most malicious bloody flame, as one entire arch of fire….of above a mile long. It made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, all on fire and flaming at once, and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin…. Over the Thames with one’s face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops. It is reported that Samuel actually buried his wines and parmesan cheese to protect them from the flames. And quite right too!!

The cost was staggering. 80% of the city was destroyed, including 13,000 houses, 89 churches and 52 Company (Guild) Halls. Old St Paul’s Cathedral was completely destroyed. It was a disaster of epic proportions.

But there is always hope. It became the opportunity to rebuild. Out of a seemingly hopeless Armageddon style disaster came the great Sir Christopher Wren, who submitted to His Majestry Charles II plans for the complete rebuilding of the city.  Here was the opportunity not only to rebuild with bricks and mortar, but the chance to make London a healthier, brighter, cleaner place in which to live. However, the King realised that the expense of such a task in the time scale made it unworkable.  Instead he gave Wren Royal Appointment to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral. Wren’s masterpiece stands to this very day.

Another of Wren’s remarkable achievements is The Monument (1671-1679) to commemorate the Great Fire. This slender column stands 202 feet high, which is the exact distance from its base to the site of the bakers shop where the fire began. The Monument is open all year round and can be climbed to gain a fantastic view of the city.

Other buildings were added over many years and the new London rose, gradually, like a phoenix out of the ashes into the magnificent metropolis it is today, to which tourists from all over the world converge to admire and enjoy. It seems symbolic that out of a desperate and seemingly impossible situation there is indeed always hope, an example to us all never to give up.

In 1986 the Bakers Company issued a belated apology for the fire. A bit late really, but the thought is there!

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