The Great Fire of London

The Great Fire of London. It will be 350 years this Sunday September 4th, at 20.30 to be exact, since the Great Fire of London broke out and brought with it the destruction of much old London but then the birth and expansion of modern London. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3BWJf8Jl5w[/embed] To commemorate the great fire of London and celebrate the birth of and new dawn for London (and single biggest building project the city has ever seen) artist David Best has, with the help of local school children and volunteers, has constructed model of the old city from 1666. It is presently residing on a barge by the Victoria Embankment 'London 1666'. The replicate of the old city is set to be set alit on Sunday at, you guess it, 8.30pm. Best has previously constructed sculpture for various other projects and the Burning Man Festival in Nevada prior to taking on the Great Fire of London project. David's floating sculpture isn't the only spectacular event in the London's Burning festival programme. A cascade of giant dominoes will follow the route of the fire, through the winding alleyways of the City of London - the continuation of a project by Station House Opera, most recently conducted in Melbourne. And there's a film projection onto the walls of St Paul's Cathedral, Christopher Wren's greatest masterpiece, which rose from the ashes of the blaze. The Fire Facts 1. The fire started in Pudding Lane. The fire started in a baker's shop owned by Thomas Farriner 2. Famous buildings including St Paul's Cathedral, The Royal Exchange, and the Guildhall were completely destroyed 3. Remarkably despite burning for 4 days, only six deaths were officially recorded, but the devastation was immense 4. 13,000 houses destroyed, 70,000 Londoners left homeless. 5. Those who could get out of the city did so. Many gathered on nearby heaths such as Hampstead. Here they were safe but they also got a good view of the destruction of the fire. (painting of the fire engulfing London Bridge) 6. Within the city walls, 80 per cent of buildings were obliterated, including 87 churches 7. The heat created by the fire was so great that the lead roof on the old St Paul's Cathedral melted 8. The Great Fire of London raged for four days, from Sunday 2nd to Wednesday 5th September, 1666. €œIt made me weep to see it,€ wrote Samuel Pepys, in his diary 9. It was the second tragedy to hit the city in the space of 12 months. Just as the city was recovering from the Great Plague, the inhabitants had to flee the city once again 10. In 1665, during the plague, the king, Charles II, had fled London. Few criticised the king when he did leave for the countryside. However, in September 1666, he stayed in London and took charge of the operation to save the city. Charles also ordered that navy rations stored in the docks in the East End should be given to those who had fled the city. How was it actually stopped? Firefighting was much more basic in 1666, and people didn't know nearly as much about stopping fires as we do today. Fire brigades used leather buckets, axes and water to try and stop the fire but, unsurprisingly, they didn't work very well. Instead, Charles II had a plan to create fire-breaks. This required knocking down and blowing up perfectly good buildings in the path of the fire and then starve the fire of the it needed to burn, creating an area with no houses to act as fuel for the fire to keep growing. The Navy used gunpowder to destroy the buildings and by the morning of September 5th, with the assistance of a change in the wind blowing the fire back on its self, the fire had been stopped. Watch London Burn Live Click the link below on Sunday and you will be able to see the sculpture go up! [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o47qgPvXAyU[/embed]