The Great Fire of London

The Great Fire of London began in a baker’s shop in Pudding Lane – the baker fiercely denied any responsibility – in the small hours of 2 September 1666.

This weekend in London there will be a festival to mark the event that destroyed so many buildings.  The fire which burned from 2-5 September destroyed much of the medieval city, swallowing 400 streets, 13,200 houses, 87 churches, and 44 livery halls.

Many of the City of London’s most iconic buildings were consumed: St Paul’s Cathedral, the Royal Exchange, Newgate Prison, Christ’s Hospital, even Whittington’s Longhouse, one of the biggest public toilets in Europe, in the Vintry. Most of the Medieval City was destroyed.
The most spectacular event of the weekend will be on Sunday night when a 120ft (37-metre) floating sculpture of a street of 17th-century wooden houses, designed by the US artist David Best and built on to barges by hundreds of schoolchildren and unemployed young people, will be torched.  I've tried to share some of them with you.  The detail is amazing.

And I wish that I could be there to see them.

It was a glorious evening for a walk a long the Thames.

The rest of the team went for a drink with the students who had worked with us over the Summer.  I am sure that they will both do well in their final year at university and we will see them back again.

I wanted to share these images with you.