The Great Fire of 1666: Restoration London’s Fall and Rise

London was shaken to its core by the traumatic events roiling mid-17th-century Britain, including civil war and plague. But the Great Fire of 1666 threatened its very existence. The fire was sudden and relentless, destroying all of mercantile and much of residential London in just four days. But London refused to bow to fate. 

Join Robert Bucholz, professor of history at Loyola University, as he re-creates the conflagration’s devastation that began from an undamped fire in Thomas Farriner’s bakeshop in Pudding Lane. Within hours thousands were forced to flee for safety as flames engulfed homes, businesses, houses of worship, the financial district, and St. Paul’s Cathedral as the medieval city of London was gutted. From this fire arose a new vision of the city proposed by Robert Hooke, Sir Christopher Wren, and other city designers. Their London would be a new, more modern, imperial city built of brick and stone. Bucholz examines how their groundbreaking vision has endured.

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