Link to the Show / Show NotesThe famous diary of Samuel Pepys was started 350 years ago this month and continued until May 1669. It was a personal, family diary but as Pepys worked for the King it contained momentous national events such as the restoration of the monarchy, the coronation of Charles II, the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666. Pepys recorded everything - his neighbour's sewage and his ineffectual groping of young women he met in church.
This walk covers the area destroyed by the Great Fire from Seething Lane near the Tower of London where Pepys lived and worked to St Dunstan's in the West which survived the conflagration by just a few yards. Pepys himself would probably have followed a similar route - the road pattern stayed much the same as it had been after the rebuilding.
Sir Christopher Wren figures prominently in the walk. An astronomer by profession, he designed a great number of City churches. His masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral is the fourth cathedral dedicated to St Paul to be built on the site which itself can be dated back to Roman times. Leadenhall Market was also a structure founded on an old Roman forum. So there's a great deal of history along the way.
Here's an exerpt from Pepys' diary as the Great Fire took hold:
Sunday 2 September 1666
(Lord’s day). Some of our mayds sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast to-day, Jane called us up about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose and slipped on my nightgowne, and went to her window, and thought it to be on the backside of Marke-lane at the farthest; but, being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off; and so went to bed again and to sleep. About seven rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at the window, and saw the fire not so much as it was and further off. So to my closett to set things to rights after yesterday’s cleaning. By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down to-night by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish-street, by London Bridge. So I made myself ready presently, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon one of the high places, Sir J. Robinson’s little son going up with me; and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side the end of the bridge; which, among other people, did trouble me for poor little Michell and our Sarah on the bridge. So down, with my heart full of trouble, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the King’s baker’s house in Pudding-lane, and that it hath burned St. Magnus’s Church and most part of Fish-street already. So I down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell’s house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steeleyard, while I was there. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another.
The major points of interest along the way are:
Leadenhall Market
St Mary at Hill Church
The Monument
St Mary Abchurch
St Stephen Walbrook
St Paul's Cathedral
Temple Church
The walk starts at Tower Hill and ends at temple. Both are in the Central zone District & Circle.
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